[on why he excelled at playing crazed backwoods preachers and religious zealots] I've always loved
Walter Huston in
Duel in the Sun (1946) as a preacher. I've always wanted to play some preachers like that 'cause my mother wanted me to be a preacher so bad, it broke her heart when I didn't. That wasn't my cup of tea. I had repressed a lot of things in me from my father's action and behavior towards his children. I didn't want to be a man like that, I didn't want to be violent, so I repressed it. When they started giving me these villains, I started drawing on that and I saw I had all the fury of hell and violence there, that I was really psychotic inside, because I could go into an instant rage or hostility. It was not acting, it was real. And they just kept giving these parts to me.