All eyes on fast-talking Nicolas

Usually movies don't show their heroes behaving the way most men honestly do. But that's one of the strengths of a director such as Brian De Palma. He's not afraid to present a paradox. I don't play an angel in Snake Eyes. I'm not the devil incarnate either. Instead it's a little of both, an Atlantic City detective whose night off ends when an assassination takes place at a prize-fight, making 14,000 fans possible suspects. The events leading up to the shooting are then replayed through the eyes of three key witnesses, leaving me to put the pieces of the puzzle together... and a movie that ultimately bears Brian's indelible stamp.

I'm always looking for something new as an actor. And this time it was the dialogue. I've never talked as fast as I do in this one and I probably never will again. Again, this was Brian's idea, and he sent me back to look at the old Howard Hawks films and Cagney movies to help develop that "old-fashioned" movie-star style. I was concerned that people wouldn't understand what I was saying because the words would be flying by so fast. But I quickly learned that De Palma is devoted to his actors and his camera in equal parts.

Brian is a chance-taker and has a style unto himself. And when he started shooting 26-minute takes there was a real excitement to that. Also there was a pressure, because if I dropped a line or flubbed a word, we had to start again from the beginning. But my fondest memory of this film will always be the excitement. Because we all knew we were doing something very new... Or something very traditional, depending on how you look at it.