Nobody ever talks about how most actors are full of fear, because the target is always moving. If you’re smart you keep on playing the same, doing the same shtick. If you really put yourself out there… It’s always risky.

Some people think I’m quite odd looking. Some think I’m handsome. Some people think I’m ugly. What can I say?

I was born in 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin – primarily a paper mill town. I grew up with Eisenhower. It was a Republican kind of area. It wasn’t a bad upbringing. People were hardworking and good, but I always had the sense there was a bigger world out there that I would feel more comfortable in. I knew, even as a child.

I’m happiest when I’m in nature. I mean, deeply in nature. It allows you to forget and join the bigger picture. My favourite landscape is jungle down to water. My dream is to wear flipflops, boxer shorts and a vest all day.

I’ve thought about murder many times. I have dreams about murders. I haven’t done it yet because I don’t think it’s my talent. I’d get caught. I’m the guy that if I’ve got some food in my luggage and I get stopped at customs, sweat breaks out on my forehead. I’m not the murdering type. I’m not a natural killer.

I’ve got a pretty distinctive look. So I’m not very often confused with people but the couple of times I have they’re always good people that I like. Often older African American women see me on the street and go: [shrieks] “Oh! Mick Jagger!”

Let me be an old crank. The information and technology world is a false freedom. It’s really dragging us down. You go out to dinner and everybody is on their phones. We’ve lost contact with each other. It’s hard enough to fight the lockstep to the grave. Now this is helping us because it’s harder and harder to have original thinking.

My closest friends are women. My mother and father worked a lot, so my five sisters raised me. All but one is older than me. They gave me a lot of good advice and trained me well. I think that makes me more appreciative of women. But I’m not going to say I understand women because of that, or that I have some special insight. I’m not gonna brag.

Keep your mouth shut and listen. That is the best piece of advice I have been given.

I played a polar bear glove puppet for Birds Eye Fish Fingers. The ad agency said: “He may only be a glove puppet but he needs integrity.” When they first pitched the idea to me it sounded really cool. I thought it was going to be an animated polar bear, inside this refrigerator, scolding people. But when I saw the glove puppet… that was a head-scratcher. I guess people found the charm in it. That’s not my main work.

Murder on the Orient Express starring Willem Dafoe is released on 3 November