"I've been painting all my life. I am not a celebrity fucking painter!" Tony Curtis bristles in annoyance at the idea that anyone could think that his bright acrylic canvases, boxes and collages are the work of some dilettante movie star in his dotage.
The 78-year-old is in Belgium for the day, attending the Flanders film festival, but he is far more interested in discussing his art than in looking back at Some Like It Hot or any of the other 100 or so movies he has made.
"Painting to me is another vocation, another language," Curtis declares. "It's as important to me as acting in movies."
Growing up in poverty in Manhattan and the Bronx in the 1930s, Bernard Schwartz, as he was known then, began drawing as a kid. Now, living in some splendour in Las Vegas with his wife, Jill Vandenberg (45 years younger than him), he is more prolific than ever. He gets up every day and has a swim in the pool; then it's straight to his studio. "Vegas is a fabulous place for a painter. The sun is dry and hot and I feel like Van Gogh some days as it beats down on me."
Curtis paints all the time. If he goes to dinner with female companions, he'll dash off a quick drawing for them on a napkin. "Each one of them gets a little Curtis, a little touch of my madness." Whenever he's travelling, he takes a sketchbook with him. He cites Matisse and Picasso as his idols.
Sometimes, he even fancies, he can hear them speaking to him. "What did they leave? They left the very essence of what they were... When I stand in front of a Picasso, he says to me, 'When you make the outline of that foot, put in a little darker colour so that it stands away from the plate.'"
He doesn't like to show in galleries ("Your paintings disappear, they charge exorbitant prices and they don't pay you the money they should!") and he hoards much of his own work. He gives the rest away to colleges and charities. "That's my way of benefiting mankind. I'm not interested in making any dough out of it. I've all the dough in the world."
Not that he despises money. "You know, pal, I started out from scratch. I started out dead broke as a boy. As soon as I started making a little money in the movies, I realised I could learn to paint, I could dance, I could sing, I could become a great lover, I could chase all the girls round the world if I wanted."
Many illustrious figures own (or have owned) Tony Curtis canvases. Billy Wilder had a number of his pieces, as did Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. "All of my buddies," says Curtis. "I'd do something and if I thought they'd like it, I'd give it to them. That was my pleasure - my rabbit's foot that I'd give to somebody as a token of my esteem."
Not so long ago, he painted a still life for the new governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his wife. "Their baby was on its way and so I said, 'Arnold, let me do something for you.'" Curtis says he was far too busy womanising to dabble in politics himself: "I loved the girls too much to allow anything to interfere with that."
