Still from ROSARIO TIJERAS - click for bigger image

WHAT'S WITH THIS ACTING STUFF? AREN'T YOU A DIRECTOR?

I am indeed a director. But what I really wanted to do was to act, as you can see from the picture above. Those ladies aren't really my girlfriends; I don't own a pair of white shoes.

WEREN'T YOU IN THAT PORNO MOVIE, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN?

No, that wasn't me, unfortunately. I think another actor calling himself Alex Cox appeared in that one. Presumably it wasn't a SAG picture, or my homologue would have had to pick a different name.

SO WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU BEEN IN?

When I was a young person I acted in plays: Joe Orton, Oh What A Lovely War, Faust. I would love to have kept at it, but there was too much competition, and I really wasn't good enough. So I became a director.

I've acted in most of the films that I've directed.In 1977 I played the lead in a long student film shot in Bristol - NEARLY WIDE AWAKE. It was directed by Martin Turner and David Hutt, and based on Knut Hamsen's book HUNGER. My character was Huxner, a tortured-artist-living-on-society's-margins-type. I was in four American features, Rose-Marie Turko's SCARRED, Dennis Hopper's BACKTRACK (in which I played the ghost of D.H. Lawrence and was made to shout, "These are the penitentes. They believe that to know Christ, you must suffer the pain of Christ!"), Adam Dubov's DEAD BEAT, and Peter McCarthy's FLOUNDERING.

THAT'S IT?

That's it for the English-language cinema. Most of my acting credits are in Mexican films. I was Jim Gandolfini's Mormon assistant in PERDITA DURANGO; I played Blanca Guerra's lover in Arturo Ripstein's LA REINA DE LA NOCHE, a crooked Mexico city policeman in Fernando Sariñana's TODO EL PODER, a drug lord in Emilio Maille's ROSARIO TIJERAS, and a gringo carpetbagger in LA LEY DE HERODES, directed by Luis Estrada, Mexico's foremost 35mm auteur.

In July I was back in Mexico to play a small part in Luis's new film, DIOS NO EXISTE - GOD DOES NOT EXIST.

WHAT WAS YOUR CHARACTER DOING?

Presenting the Nobel Peace Prize to a mass murderer. Luis is the most political director I know: his films are very funny diatribes against polite society, capitalism, and our corrupt political systems. I'm very fond of Ripstein's cinema, but it's smaller, and more personal: in terms of chosing difficult political subjects and making outrageous filmic assaults upon the establishment, "El Perrito" Estrada has no equal, anywhere in the world.

ARE YOU A GOOD ACTOR?

I don't know. I just try to learn my lines and not look at the camera. Everything I know about acting I learned from a book by Michael Green, entitled The Art of Coarse Acting. Some people think this was meant as a funny book about amateur dramatics, but actually it is a very good manual for the film actor, and a reminder of what a ridiculous job it really is, and why actors should not take themselves too seriously!

WHAT IS YOUR AMBITION, AS AN ACTOR?

My goal, as an actor, is to be the understudy to Pedro Armendariz, Jr., in the role of Max Bialystock, in the stage musical LOS PRODUCTORES.