‘Improvisation, Spontaneity and Vulnerability’: Matt Dillon Gets Lifetime Achievement Award at Locarno before heading to ‘Asteroid City’

Marta Balaga Matt Dillon might have been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at Locarno on Thursday, but he still has “stuff to do.” And he wants you to know that.“The first thing I thought was: ‘Oh wow, that’s really nice.’ And then: ‘I don’t feel like I am done just yet!’,” Dillon tells Variety ahead of the ceremony. But he has been around for a long time, he admits, having made his first film, Jonathan Kaplan’s “Over the Edge,” back in 1979.“We were a bunch of actors playing juvenile delinquents, staying at a Holiday Inn in Colorado where McDonald’s slaughterhouses are based.

One day we came across that old guy, a scenic painter, who worked on ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ It was like running into Mozart.” Curious about everything, he was affected by seeing characters come to life and the idea of mirroring human nature right from the start.“Somebody was suggesting I was a ‘child actor.’ I wasn’t! I didn’t become an actor because I felt like: ‘Momma, I want to sing’,” he states.“My family didn’t have a background in show business. But as soon as I started, it just didn’t occur to me that it wouldn’t happen again.

It was so natural. Many actors would tell you the same thing.

I think it’s because we just don’t know what else to do.”Dillon – who scored an Oscar nod for his performance in “Crash” – would look up to acting heavyweights Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift or James Dean, trying to do his research and “find the character.”“Improvisation, spontaneity and vulnerability were important to us early on,” he says. Later he became attracted to the spontaneity of another artist, Cuban singer Francisco Fellove.