Academy-award nominated actor Albert Brooks may be best known for Taxi Driver or Broadcast News, but he’s always somehow managed to remain under the radar. As a largely comic actor, this fall’s Drive finally brings out that inner, dark part of him we known all comics carry. And it may just earn him his second Oscar nomination…

The Underground: What was it like working on Drive, with the cast and crew?
Albert Brooks: Sometimes these experiences work or they don’t. And I’ve been in both. And when they don’t work, you do your job, go home and quite frankly, some people just never wanna see you again… [It’s like] you have a terrible date. It was the opposite here! This was a small budget independent movie, and people were doing it because they wanted to be there and it worked.

TU: How difficult was it to play a character like yours in the film, without having judgments against him?
AB: Oh, I don’t have judgments against the character. I mean, first of all, this character wasn’t, this guy didn’t get up in the morning and kill people. I had to think a lot about this, and I think maybe 25 years ago, he probably killed one person. You didn’t pay him, he’d probably have somebody hurt you. This became ‘him or you’. They forced him into this, he was mostly angry about it. I didn’t make judgments about the violent aspect, because in fact, the violence was brought to him, and he was minding his own business.

TU: How did you become involved with the film?
AB: I was going to San Francisco on a Friday afternoon. On Thursday, the casting director called my manager and she [had known us] for a long time and said, “You said that Albert’s always been looking to play a really interesting villain. I want you to read something.” So we got the script in an hour and a half and I read it and she said, “The director has rented a house, could he see [Albert] before he goes to San Francisco?” I wasn’t told that it was officially being offered to me, [but] it sounded like Nicolas was already interested. …I went to him and he sort of played coy, you know, “Why do you think you should play this part?” And I had a good answer, I said, “Don’t cast me, cast somebody who everybody knows is the bad guy and there’ll be no mystery to the movie.” Then he told me when he was a younger man, he watched Lost in America, [and] I scared him the way I yelled at my wife and I thought, that’s ok, that’s good…and it developed over the next few days.

TU: How did you like playing a villain?
AB: I like playing something that is not expected of me, that’s the most fun. I know what I’m capable of as an actor. The thing with movies is when you think about it, there are about a dozen people who play all the parts in a movie; they just rotate from movie to movie, it’s like a baseball team. …To break into that, someone’s injured, the bad guy who plays shortstop all the time is injured, ‘Let Albert go in!’ …[The idea that] people will get [typecasting] stuck in their head just isn’t true, all that stuff is bullshit. What people buy is a good story.  All of it is made up! Why would you buy Brad Pitt in anything? He’s Brad Pitt, you see him with Angelina Jolie. But if it’s working in the dark, you’re watching it, you buy it! It’s all fake. So if you’re capable, get on the team and throw the ball.

TU: The movie has been generating a lot of awards buzz, including yourself. How are you handling it?
AB: What did you hear?! [laughs] Listen, my goodness, what can you ever say about that? If someone says, ‘Here, take it’, you say thank you. If you ever do anything creative with an award in the back of your mind, you’re dead. I don’t know why it happens, how it happens… [but] if anybody says they liked you, you’re happy.