Emmanuel Itier: Tell us about your role in Takers. You play a good guy, right?

Matt Dillon: [Laughs] Good guy, bad guy. Cops and robbers. Like when we were kids, playing cops and robbers.  I don’t think it’s quite as simple as good guys versus bad guys, but I play a cop.  He’s not perfect, that’s for sure. He’s got his own problems, he’s divorced. He’s very obsessed with his work. He’s a little heavy-handed as a cop — he’s maybe too into it.  There are two storylines that are running in the movie. There are the guys who are going around doing a series of ambitious bank heists — that’s Paul [Walker] and those crew guys — and there are the two detectives who are following them, and that’s myself and Jay Hernandez. Each of these threads…there are other sides and personal stories, and the thing with myself and Jay is that we are partners and we’ve been partners for a while, and we have an emotional bond with each other, but we have a different philosophy in looking at life and doing things. He’s a good family man, but there’s a tragic outcome with him that is sort of a surprise that goes against my beliefs. It’s very tragic and it culminates the outcome of his character and the way our relationship happens at the end.  I think that’s what I liked about it. It’s a genre movie. I haven’t done a lot of action movies. I like to do things different. When I read it, it reminded me of a ’70s action movie.  It made sense, and I had just done Armored, which I really liked doing, and I really like that filmmaker, Nimrod Antal — he’s Hungarian.  He made Vacancy, but before that, he made a film which I really liked called Control, which he shot in Budapest.

EI: Vacancy with Kate Beckinsale? That was a great movie.

MD: Yeah, he’s a real good filmmaker, and Armored is with Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, and I liked that. That one was again a heist picture, but it’s an inside job. What I liked about that character was that he had layers.  We think we know who he is in the beginning, and then we find out he’s somebody entirely different, but we know he’s kind of manipulating. My character puts together this heist to knock off our own company. It’s an inside job. Columbus Short plays a new guy on my team, but I’ve known him since he was a kid because his father was my mentor. So I look at him and I’m like, “You don’t have to worry.” I talk to him like a little brother.  I take care of him. He’s got concerns. His house is being foreclosed on. He’s taking care of his younger brother and I manipulate him — I use all that stuff. I’m constantly manipulating him, and I love that! I like characters like that.  I think you can sense, as the audience, that that is what he’s doing. He’s playing this kid and he sucks him in. He pulls him in and he’s very controlling in that way, but in the end, he feels betrayed by the kid because the kid gets a case of the morals. When something goes bad and someone gets killed, he’s not willing to see it through, and then he’s willing to sacrifice whatever feelings he has about the kid.  I like the complexity of it. I really liked it and I liked the ensemble cast. Columbus is really good and Jean Reno and Fishburne — it was just a good group of guys — a nice ensemble, working together.  Again, for me, what I liked about it was the character — there’s no arc. The character doesn’t learn anything or discover anything about himself, but what we learn about him is big. It’s a really big arc. I think that’s more important — that the arc the audience discovers is more important than the character having some sort of personal, spiritual arc himself.  I really liked where that went. I liked working with those actors.

EI: As an accomplished director/filmmaker, do you choose films differently, and do you find you can be a backseat director on set sometimes?

MD: I think having been a director gives me a perspective that can be helpful.

EI: Is it hard to let go?

MD: No, because what I’ve realized as I’ve grown older is that I’m not responsible for every aspect of the movie.  I used to feel like, “I can’t do this movie.” I make decisions on films all the time like I was responsible for everything about the film.  I’m not– I’m an actor in it.  There’s only so much I can do. I’m not there in the editing room. I’m not responsible for that. As a director, I am, and when I directed, I felt responsible for everything I did. As long as the film, in the end, wasn’t taken away from me and recut by somebody else, I could take responsibility for that.  But I can’t take responsibility as an actor for an entire film. I can only take responsibility for what I do in my work, so it is a director’s medium. The best scenario is to work with directors who you really believe in, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

EI: Has it been easier to be an actor who has directed?

MD: It’s easier to have that perspective. I am able to say, “Hey look, I like this role. I can have some fun making this film.” It’s grand for me to think that I’m responsible for the outcome of that movie, like I would have any ultimate say on what happens.  It’s ridiculous. So I just have to look at it as will I have fun making it? That’s what I do — I’m an actor.

EI: Do you feel all the hype around the young actors these days? It was different when you started. Do you think the business has changed?

MD: I don’t spend a lot of time focusing on it, to be honest. The business has changed, I’ve noticed, over the years consistently — that there’s less interest in the work from actors.  They seemed to be more concerned with other stuff.  I think that’s going to change. I think that’s one of those ebb-and-flows. People have been more concerned with the deal and all that stuff.

EI: You mean what they’re doing off screen?

MD: That’s a big problem too.

EI: You grew up in an era when they didn’t have the Internet or camera phones.

MD: Yeah, it’s weird, but I think it’s too bad. They say, “they don’t make them like they used to,” but whether it’s buildings or cars or movies…I still think we are making really good films in some areas.

EI: What was the last movie you saw that you loved?

MD: I’m going to need another cup of coffee for that one!

EI: Paul Walker talked about his passion for fishing for about 20 minutes. What is your real passion?

MD: I feel passionate when I’m creative.  I was in South Sudan; I’m involved with the Refugees International, which is an organization I’m very passionate about.  I avoided joining the board for years, although I did a lot of work for them, because I didn’t want that responsibility. They are a group I’ve been involved with for years, and I joined the board about year and a half ago. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.  I think it’s so important. It gives you a perspective on life. I’m interested in other cultures and civilizations. I like people, so they [film and people] are the two things that come together, and I think doing something like that, I learn about myself.  That’s how I find out about myself — who I am.  Discovering what I like doing and what interests me. I went to the South Sudan in February because we were doing an assessment on returning people. What’s been going on with Dufar — there’s a lot of focus on it, but we’re trying to put a little attention back on South Sudan, which is the North/South conflict — the peace treaty that was signed. It’s a fragile peace, and if that war breaks out again, the whole region is unstabalized and it will be a disaster for all of Sudan, including it will grow worse for Dufar. I shot a ten-minute documentary. You asked about my passion, and that’s something I’m passionate about.  When I started editing that film, I really got into it. It’s not a personal film or a film I was making as a filmmaker so much as an advocacy to try and raise awareness. I really got into it. I’m having a good day when I bound up the stairs, and I’m usually that way when I’m doing something that I feel good about, when I’m creative. Being there, what I learned about myself is that I’m not a passive person. I am somebody who has to get involved.  I like working with the people there. I didn’t want to just find out information, so I’m good when I’m doing something.

EI: Are you still passionate about music?

MD: I play drums a little bit — congas. I’m not ready to make a record!

EI: On the Internet, it says you’re making a Brazilian sex comedy…

MD: No, there’s no truth to that at all.  I don’t know how that got out there. It drives me crazy when they write stuff that isn’t true. A friend of mine made that film. Somebody once said to me, “You were in Malcolm X…” and I looked it up and on IMDB – it says I was in Malcolm X because there’s a guy named Matt Dillon who’s a friend of Spike Lee, who is black… I know him from New Orleans from the Jazz Fest like 15 years ago, so people think I was in that movie.

EI: What has kept you in the business for so long? You have such a huge body of work.

MD: Are you kidding? I wouldn’t give this up! The healthiest thing for me is doing other things, getting outside of your comfort zone, and I loved directing. That gives you a new lease on life and a new way of looking at things.

EI: What’s the hardest genre for you to do? You’ve said it’s comedy in the past.

MD: No, I was just saying that in general comedy is hard. I am not trying to say that it is especially hard for me — just in general it’s hard. I do a lot of comedy, but I’m not a comedic actor. There are a lot of actors where that’s their thing so they’re expected to be funny all the time.  I think that’s got to be more difficult.

EI: You’re more of the straight guy?

MD: I wasn’t the straight guy in Something About Mary.  But with Owen Wilson in You, Me and Dupree, I was kind of the straight guy.  That’s harder, doing the straight guy, in a way — playing a reactive character.

EI: What do you do to stay in shape?

MD: Lately I’ve been moving because I’ve been doing work on my apartment, so I’ve been doing a lot of stairs. I have buns of steel! [Laughs] I’ve been going up and down stairs because I had to move after all these years of being in one spot, and now I’m doing renovations.

EI: You also haven’t aged. What’s your secret? What is the anti-aging cream you are using and not telling us about?

MD: [Laughs] If you really look at me, I have aged, but maybe I haven’t aged that much, which is good.  I don’t know what it is, but I’m lucky that I have my mother’s genes.  She’s very youthful.  Not my dad’s genes!

EI: What’s on your iPod when you work out at the gym?

MD: I was thinking about that yesterday on the plane. I was in Cancun 12 years ago and I think I’ve got the same music, but it’s great music!  It’s changed possibly a little bit, but it’s mostly Afro-Cuban or Brazilian music, or I listen to ’20s Jazz.

EI: How did you get into that kind of music?

MD: I just like music. What usually helps is when you visit the countries. I got into Brazilian music more when I went there. You start to enjoy the culture and suck up the atmosphere, and it enriches the experience. I go home and all I want to do is listen to the music to bring me back to where I just was.  But I like all music. I love Irish folk music. I just heard some interesting Russian gypsy music. It was fantastic.