Q 6

PLAYBOY: You've spent a good deal of time in period costumes. What do you wear around the house?

Charlton Heston: Tennis clothes a lot. And warm-up clothes. My wife and my daughter both tell me that I don't have very good taste in picking clothes, and I'm willing to rely on their judgment in that area. Clothes aren't very important to me. I like old clothes. For instance, these trousers I'm wearing were made for The Omega Man. These boots, which I have in both black and brown, are copies of some Arabian boots made for Ben-Hur. The originals were a fawn color with purple patterned overlays. I remember taking them to Maxwell's, a bootmaker in London. I said, "Could you guys make me a pair of these?' They guy said, "I don't think we can do that kind of thing, sir. No, no, no." I said, "I don't mean in this color. Black would be fine." He said, "Oh, yes. In that case, we could make them.' Your could see on his face the real revulsion he felt for those yellow-and-purple boots.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: Do you wear Jockey shorts or boxer shorts?

Charlton Heston: Jockey. I hate boxer shorts. They look tacky.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: What do you know about Charlton Heston that everyone else, after all these years, still misses?

Charlton Heston: People don't perceive me as a shy man. But I am. I am thought of mostly in terms of the parts I play. I am seen as a forbidding authority figure. I only wish I were as indomitable as everyone thinks.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: In your book, you describe Barbara Walters as "ball-cutting." Do tough women intimidate you?

Charlton Heston: I don't think anybody intimidates me. I find tough women off-putting, I guess. And dispiriting. Emasculation is the unconscious intent. I have more empathy for women's condition than I'm generally thought to have. I know better than most people how tough it is for actresses. There are fewer parts for them, and their careers are shorter. It also takes them longer to get dressed and made up, and people get restive about that. All those things are unfair. But being confrontational is no more helpful for a woman than it is for a man. I know a lot of ladies who do very well without behaving that way. Women like Bella Abzug have done the women's cause a lot of harm. The white-lipped belligerence with which some women, understandably, have assaulted the inequities has harmed their search for equality more than it has helped.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: You've been married to the same woman for 40 years. What's the secret?

Charlton Heston: Well, you've got to be a superb husband. That's my joke answer. Actually, I think of myself as a remarkably tolerant fellow. My wife and children tell me that this is not necessarily true, that I am quite idiosyncratic and sometimes contrary. But I think my wife would also say that I'm easy to get along with. Part of the secret is recognizing that your partner has different priorities, different anxieties, different needs; that they may be in conflict with yours, let alone different from yours. Then a definition of being in love with someone is willingness to subordinate your needs to hers--not invariably but if it's an issue that really counts. I have sometimes misread those needs. But people also say that the first year of any relationship is the hardest, so perhaps one of the best things about my marriage is that I spent the first year overseas. We squeaked by with no problems.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: What's better than sex?

Charlton Heston: Getting it right. Getting it right one time. One thing about being an actor or a painter is that you never do get it right--but always, maybe you're going to. Sex is great. You get it right. It's predominantly fantastic. You say, "It's never been so good." But painting the Sistine Chapel or trying to write a symphony or play Hamlet, you never fucking get it right.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: What sort of advice would you give to young actors? What do you know that they will find out?

Charlton Heston: In the beginning, when you're studying acting, it's like a religion and you're an acolyte of the true faith. And anybody who doesn't do it the way you do it is an agent of the antichrist. The more you do it, the more you find out that you don't know everything you thought you did. You become a catholic, with a small c. What counts is "Does it work?" There's a wonderful story about Laurence Olivier on the stage in Othello. His is considered very possibly the best performance by any actor in any part in living memory. I certainly have never seen anything like it. Maggie Smith, who was Desdemona, told me this: One night, at the final curtain, there was the silence and then the ovation, as always. But the actors couldn't believe how remarkable, how much better than ever it had been. So Maggie wanted to talk with Olivier--though usually, afterward, you just say goodnight. She knocked on his dressing-room door. He was sitting in the inner room, still in wardrobe, with a large whiskey in his hand and the makeup still on and the sweat running down his face, looking absolutely desolate. He didn't even look up when she came in. Maggie said, "Larry, you know how good that was, don't you?" He said, "Yes, but I don't know how I did it." In the context of that story, something he once said to me works: "Sometimes the gods breathe in your ear. That's fine and you're home free. But you have to find a way when they don't. And they won't do it all the time."