Love letters. I wrote this in my diary (indeed, a diary, on [un]fittingly,) just above my historical summary of Night of the Long Knives. Brains are so predictable.
I have never quite got over the fact that “acting” for a man — and I’m afraid still do you think, that a really, proper man — is sissified and vaguely ridiculous. I will do this film with Ponti and Loren out of sheer cupidity–desire for money. I will unquestionably do many more. But my heart, unlike yours, is not in it. The French have a word for it, what I am and it is called “manque,” meaning a failure of desire.
…I am everything “manque.” An actor manque, a philosopher manque, a writer manque, and consequently an intolerable bore. (Not manque, I’m afraid.)
