Q: Your longtime partner, Jessica Lange, has two Academy Awards, but when you were nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Right Stuff in 1984, you didn’t attend the Oscars. Why is that?
A: It was too many people. I’ve never felt great in crowds, and certainly not when they’re puttin’ the spotlight on you like that. I’ve been to one Oscar thing, I think, with Jessie, when she was nominated for—I’m not quite sure what for now. I think it was where she played Patsy Cline. I’ve always felt uncomfortable in those situations.

Q: Your acting career was taking off at the time. Were you getting lots of offers?
A: Yeah. I turned a lot of stuff down. I still mainly considered myself a playwright at that point, and I just felt like, if I start doin’ this stuff and become a quote-unquote movie star, it’s really going to be difficult to have anybody take my writing seriously. So I kind of backed away from it.

Q: What did you turn down?
A: Oh, well, I guess the most notorious one was Lonesome Dove. And then the big Clint Eastwood Western, Unforgiven.

Q: You passed that up?
A: Yeah. I’m not even sure why, now. Then there was another one called Big that Tom Hanks did. And Warren Beatty’s Reds. Stuff like that. But I couldn’t see myself doin’ it.

Q: Your agent must’ve wanted to kill you.
A: She did, yeah.

Q: When I mention your name to women, they actually moan. Are you aware of this reaction?
A: Ha! That’s very flattering. No, the first thing is, if women do have that response, they always try to hide it. That’s the last thing in the world they’re going to reveal. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if there was some revelation of it, but it’s not the case. So you really don’t get that much perk out of it.

Q: You’re 64. Is writing harder now or easier?
A: Both. Once I get into it, there’s something more accessible about it now. But it’s tougher to begin now—to really begin, and to really commit. I think you have more doubts about what’s valuable, I guess.

Q: Because particularly back in your early days you were spitting out a flurry of one-acts…
A: Yeah, you didn’t give a shit. Just go. Just go. The great New York poet Frank O’Hara, he said you go on guts. That’s what he said. You go on guts. That’s what you feel like when you’re that age. But now it’s like it’s like you go on terror! You’re terrified. It’s still guts, but it’s a different deal.

Q: What’s else has changed as you’ve gotten older?
A: Well, I notice I’m a little slower getting up on a horse. Fishin’ in a river, sometimes I get out of breath and I’m a little more tentative about getting into deep water. The physical limitations—your balance isn’t as strong as it used to be, you can’t jump fences.