In Arlington Road, Tim Robbins plays a next-door neighbor to Jeff Bridges who may or may not be a terrorist. Robbins goes on to describe his choice for this role (he gets terribly tired of playing the good guys all the time), describes what's currently wrong with the country and don't even get him started by calling him a "political actor."

Andy Jones: These people really exist.

Tim Robbins: Yes sir. Those people are Americans. There are those kind of people all over the world. It's called fundamentalism. It's when you believe that your god is telling you to commit some act of violence. That happens in the Mideast, that happens in Spain, that happens in Midwest America, it happens in Canada, it happens everywhere. There is a justification in their minds for that violence and they go to church on Sunday and they keep right with their god. I don't know, I can't explain that to you. But that happens.

AJ: Was that the appeal of the movie for you?

TR: The appeal of the movie, to me, was that it was a really well-written script. I mean, it moved fast; it was a good thriller. It was a genre I hadn't done. I hadn't done a thriller. It was a character I wanted to play. All of those things.

AJ: Jeff Bridges has said that you had the script first, so you were able to decide whether you'd be in his role or yours. Did you think about it for a while?

TR: Yeah. I was torn. But then I realized, you know, I've had the burden of being good too often in the past five years. It's a lot of responsibility, you know? And I hadn't done a bad guy since Bob Roberts, actually.

AJ: Well, you do evil so well, it's kind of funny that people don't think of you as evil more often.

TR: I know. It's weird. I am an evil son of a bitch.

AJ:Is evil easier for you to do?

TR: For me, yeah.

AJ: When you're working as an actor, do you think much about the director's work?

TR: Not at all. I always just think as an actor. I don't want anything to do with what kind of shot it is or what the lighting is. It's an intense and exhausting job to be a director. And so, when I'm not directing, I know that I'd much rather be acting at that point. So, it's never really any conflict. The people that you hear about that tend to give directors a hard time... actors that you hear about that want to get involved in all that stuff are people that haven't directed before. And once they do direct, they realize, "Oh, I see. This is a hard job. I should respect this guy more."

AJ: People call you and Susan Sarandon actors with a political bent.

TR: Now, see, I totally disagree with you and your definition of words. I'd define a political person as someone that acts in a way for his one self-benefit and not for the benefit of others. If I make a political decision, I make a decision that will benefit me. You know what I'm saying? You think about a politician and they make political decisions not what they believe in. Personally, they say, "I'm against gun control, but my constituents and the money and the power says I should be for them." I'm for gun control. You know what I'm saying? That's a political decision. A humanistic decision is another thing. And those people tend to get into more trouble.

AJ: Is that where you see yourself?

TR: Yeah. And I have an aversion to the word "political" because I don't consider myself political and I don't get involved in politics. I don't support political candidates. I'm abhorred by most of the political candidates, most of the politicians in the country.

AJ:So, when people call you political, it bugs you.

TR: It does. Because I don't like that word and I don't think that word is accurate. And it's also a word that is devoid of humor. And I think that part of the reason that I'm still around and still have a career is because I've always retained a sense of humor about what I do and in what I do.

AJ: So, what's going wrong in this country with guns and violence and young people?

TR: I think people have to define what their bottom line is. And it has to be an absolute. If you're talking about spirituality or peace, you're talking about an absolute. And that bottom line has to be absolute. And that means absolutely no bounds. No question, under any circumstance. And that's a very, very difficult thing. It's very difficult, because it's against what our human nature is. We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved people, although we really are not that far removed from... revenge is a very natural thing in men. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so much violence and so much war. And, you know, try not eating for three days... and see where your rage is. You're very capable of killing somebody.

Try being chemically unbalanced like a lot of these kids that go into the high schools are. Those kids were being medicated with Prozac. They're medicating teenagers now? What's that all about? You're supposed to be depressed as a teenager. That's your job. You're supposed to be depressed and you're supposed to have rage. What are parents and teachers doing across this country? Medicating them. Put them on Prozac. Make them feel better. See, they're denied their rage, they're denied their depression and it boils up and it boils up and it's happening again and again and again across the country. [People] going into schools, going into shopping centers and blowing people away.

It happened in Oregon. This guy in Colorado was on a derivative of Prozac, another anti-depressant. It's happening again and again and again. What's the bottom line? Violence? OK. What about that war we just did? What do we feel about that? If you're willing to condemn it and if Clinton's willing to say we have to have more control on handguns or automatic weapons, well, what about the billions of dollars he's just advocated for the Pentagon? Where do you think that money's going? Peace? That's violence. It's going straight to violence. We are subsidizing military contractors. We give them corporate welfare, meaning the taxpayer pays so that the military contractors can make more weapons. And where do you think those weapons go? Not to democratic countries. They go to people like Milosevic. So, what does Milosevic do? He abuses his power and who has to come in and fix it all up? We do. So, we're spending money to give them weapons and we're spending money to go clean it up. And meanwhile, the schools are falling apart. Enough said.

AJ: That terrorist seminar your character led was chilling.

TR: And I'm more than happy to tell that story because that is true. If there's an alarm bell to be sounded, I would like to sound that alarm bell because there are those people out there who do exist in small cells. There's a lot we don't know about but there have been groups that have [been] monitoring them for years. And they know they're out there. There's a group called Klanwatch in the South that has been monitoring right-wing paramilitary groups for years. And only recently, after Oklahoma City, did the FBI even call those people. They didn't give a s--t about it before.

AJ: Some of these groups and certainly the people who lead these groups are unbalanced. Do you worry at all about becoming sort of a folk hero to them? Because people sometimes get confused between Tim Robbins and who he plays.

TR: There are people who are confused who think that a TV actress is their girlfriend. You know, it doesn't matter that she wasn't doing anything political. Psychos will find that kind of stuff in anything. It doesn't have to do with the content, is what I'm saying. It's just a twisted kind of thing. So, no, I'm not worried about it.

AJ: The ending almost makes the movie.