Bobby D puttin’ in work. A.O. Scott interviews the actor over at the New York Times:

A.S.: Looking back, I find that one of the things that strikes me most is the consistency with which you’ve kept working for 40 years. And that’s a question that I’m fascinated by, whether I was asking Scorsese or Bruce Springsteen or Meryl Streep or Woody Allen: How do you keep it going and keep it fresh?

R.D.: I enjoy it. I like it. And especially when you get older, you start realizing you don’t have that much time. And you look back and say, “The last 15 years, it went by kind of quickly.” You don’t really know it until you get there and look back and say, “Geez, where did that time go?” I know I’ve gotta account for every day, every moment, every this, every that, but it still went, that time went. So now I have the next whatever, hopefully 15, 20 years if I’m lucky, and I think what to use that time for.

…A.S.: What about being on the other side of that, when you’re the director?

R.D.: I always feel you have to be very, very — whatever an actor does they can do no wrong. And they have to have that feeling so that they can try anything they want. Even if it’s not right, it doesn’t matter. Maybe we’ll use part of it. It’s O.K., do it once your way and then do it my way and then we’ll decide, or I’ll decide later, which is really the best. And sometimes you do that just to let the person get it out. I know I’ve done that with myself. I’d do it and I get it out and then I realize it probably wasn’t right. But I got it out.