Q 13

PLAYBOY: You say that Robert De Niro is one of your favorite actors. In terms of the consistency of Oscar-quality performances, how does his work in Raging Bull stack up against yours in Ben-Hur?

Charlton Heston: There are parts I can play that De Niro couldn't. And vice versa. But acting is not competition. I, along with most of my colleagues, deplore that idea. Every actor should set standards for himself that are higher than those anyone else will set. What was that bit, though slightly off the mark, about when Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn first worked together? She had a debate with him about whether maybe she should have first billing. He was not receptive. She said, "Well, you know, ladies first." He said, "Honey, this is a movie, not a lifeboat." And acting is not a foot race.

Also, Ben-Hur is not my favorite performance. I have never given a performance with which I was totally pleased. I would be surprised if De Niro were as pleased with Raging Bull as I was. I have done some work that I like better than others: Kartoum, Will Penny, El Cid, parts of Soylent Green. I admire De Niro's willingness to extend his range, to try things beyond the apparent limits of his physical range.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: When you get philosophical, what do you say?

Charlton Heston: If it happens to you, it's your fault. It's amazing how much energy the human animal spends on assigning the blame elsewhere. It's nonsense. I like to think that my best quality is that I will accept the responsibility for my life on every level. You can also simplify your life if, when you've made a mistake, you say, "I was wrong. I shouldn't have done that." Many people find that hard to do. I think the recent history of the world might have been different if on the day after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon had said, "Some of my employees and supporters, in misguided zeal, committed a felony break-in for which I must accept full responsibility."

Q 15

PLAYBOY: Who really runs America?

Charlton Heston: It's not the multinational corporations. That's bullshit. The news departments of the major television networks have an unfair influence. The media have become almost a fourth arm of Government, something the fellas who wrote the Constitution didn't figure on. Dan Rather is more important than anyone in Government except the President--and the Constitution provides for the President's enormous power to be properly checked and balanced by Congress and the Supreme Court. Nobody got to vote for Rather. "Now, I know what he says: You do get to vote for me. You can turn me off." Well, people can turn him off, but that's the news. He has enormous influence on events without the responsibility for life-and-death decisions. Of course, a free press is essential to a free society, but on a certain level, you could say it's an ornament of a free society. No one has yet begun to adequately measure the power of the moving image. But Lenin understood it. Goebbels understood it. More than armies or ambassadors, the moving image can shape the way we perceive ourselves, other people, the world, what's happened and what's going to happen.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: What were your thoughts while parting the Red Sea?

Charlton Heston: I was hoping that the dump tanks would work. Actually, I don't think the actor exists who really lives a role. Your can't. You've got to keep close enough to reality to control what's happening. But there are situations in which you can surrender for a moment. For example, to stand in the desert before 8000 people, 5000 animals and 27 assistant directors and lift that stick and say, "Bear us out of Egypt, O Lord, as an eagle bears its young upon its wings"--that's remarkable.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: Women still go crazy over you. Men are respectful. You probably have the major franchise on presence. Do you ever feel it slipping away when you look in the mirror? Do you catch yourself saying goodbye to all that?

Charlton Heston: That's what comes from having your nose broken. Well, obviously, it happens as you age. I think men are luckier in that regard than women. I suppose that up to a certain point, the face I have improves with age. My daughter saw El Cid years after I had done it. She said, "Oh, Daddy. You were beautiful then." I laughed, of course. But my face is, perhaps, more useful now than it was 30 years ago.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: You have three guard dogs. Who named them? Who feeds them? What are your conversations with them like? Which of the three is most politically aware--as dogs go?

Charlton Heston: I named them. The dogs are all named after historical characters: Pompey and Ramses and Portia--after Brutus' wife, not the car. They're fed by the housekeeper, though their grandfather was fed by me and their mother and father were fed by my kids. Our conversations are complicated by the fact that their grandfather was a really great dog and their mother and father really good dogs. So I suppose I regard these three somewhat pejoratively for not living up to their forebears, which is unfair. We have a cordial relationship. Their political awareness is part of their problem. For so long, they were just the troupe following behind. Now they are the only dogs and they don't know how to handle it.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: Even though it has elected a former actor President, isn't the public's fear of the politically involved actor just fear of being manipulated by someone who may, after all, not be sincere--just acting?

Charlton Heston: That's an interesting point. The only people who take the comment that they perform something well as a compliment are actors. To anyone else, performance is phony, a deception and unfair. But any good political leader has to be a marvelous actor. Churchill, De Gaulle, Mark Antony, for God's sake, were all superb actors. Churchill didn't rally the Western world with the blood, sweat and tears, fight them on the beaches, fight them on the landing fields just on the spur of the moment. He wrote it, rehearsed it; he learned his speeches by heart. That was performance. Actors are regarded more skeptically because they are known to be actors. But giving actors a break and judging them on the merits of what they say rather than on the basis of what they do--that doesn't have a high priority with me. We're members of one of the world's oldest minority groups. People are generally skeptical of us. We're regarded as thieves, drunks and wife stealers. Sometimes with good reason.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: Who are Charlton Heston's heroes?

Charlton Heston: I've played a couple of them: Jackson and Jefferson. I admire inordinately the extraordinary man. We live in the century of the common man, and I think we have become skeptical of the possibility of the genuinely great man. But believe me, great men have existed. That there don't happen to be any around right now doesn't mean great men and women have not moved the world. In fact, I think the possibility, the potential of the extraordinary individual is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the species. I suspect that reindeer and horses and turtles don't have that wide a potential. It's admittedly a sardonic view of life. But whether or not that extraordinary individual who comes along every half-billion people or so is enough to save the race, I don't know. What's the old joke that ended, "We'd be up to our ass in crocodiles"? We're very close to that right now.