I would rather have built my life than be put on this pedestal.

I didn't choose "Death in Venice". "Death in Venice" chose me.

My career is one of the few that started at the absolute top and then worked its way down. That was lonely.

I was just 16 and [Luchino Visconti] and the team took me to a gay nightclub. Almost all the crew were gay. The waiters at the club made me feel very uncomfortable. They looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish. I knew I couldn't react. It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters.

It's very different now, but you can see why most actors would avoid homosexual roles . . . After I was in Mort à Venise (1971) so many papers in America wrote that I was homosexual. All from one movie! I kept having to say no, no, which makes me sound desperate or prejudiced . . . so I think for me I'm better being far away from all that.