It's no secret that great actors often model their performances after various people they encounter throughout their lives. Take, for example, Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp, who famously based his Jack Sparrow character on swaggering Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
In the case of John Turturro, who plays the overbearing head of a super-secret government agency in the upcoming alien robot epic Transformers, inspiration came from the unlikeliest of sources: director Michael Bay.
"I kept looking at him, thinking, maybe I should do it more like Michael Bay -- at least a little bit," Turturro confessed last week at the Transformers press day. "Sometimes (after a take) I would tell him, 'I was doing you.' And he'd say, 'That was really funny.' 'Well yeah, just because I was doing you. You're such a narcissist. You're so in love with yourself, you're just seeing me through you. But you're better looking than me, so it's ok.' And of course he would like it."
Given the chance to qualify his statement, Turturro held firm. "I don't care; I'll lay it right out there," he laughed. "He knows he's in love with himself."