Harvey Keitel hunts for his Mallorcan mobster's hideout

Harvey Keitel has breakfast dressed in black silk pajama pants and flip-flops. He orders four soft-boiled eggs and eats them one by one during the course of the interview.

"We actors know how to talk and eat at the same time, it's part of our job," he says in an ironic, relaxed tone, sitting in the garden of a luxury hotel in Deià, on the Balearic island of Mallorca.

He and his wife, the actress, screenwriter and director Daphna Kastner, are here to find suitable locations for their new movie. All Keitel would say about the project is that the story takes place between New York and Mallorca, and follows "the adventure of a family of three, a couple and a child without family ties."

If Keitel speaks tersely about the project, perhaps it is because he is superstitious about saying too much. After all, an Italian living in New York told him before his trip to the Spanish island that "being superstitious is silly, but it's bad luck not to be."

In the film, a former Italian mobster (played by Keitel) takes refuge in a cave on a Mallorcan cliff that looks out to sea, and also in the mountains of Tramontana, between the towns of Valldemossa, Sóller and Pollença. His life and business will not be the same after a woman (Kastner) and a child come into his life.

"Maybe the name of Mallorca will be in the title," says Kastner mysteriously. The Mallorca Film Commission is certainly working hard to ensure the film is shot here.

Kastner is still putting together scenes and dialogue. Keitel clearly adores her: "Hers are the most romantic movies I've ever seen. That's how I fell in love with her, by watching her. I didn't want to be a director - or didn't have the time - and so I married a director. But I'm still here and there's still time."

Harvey Keitel's warm gaze contradicts his tough-guy roles in some of the more than 80 movies he's made, the first of which was shot in 1967.

The veteran actor reveals that he did some swimming at the hotel pool early in the morning. Other days he swam between the rocks on the coast or on the beach with his son, he says. He has traipsed across mountain areas and sampled some of the local food. He has discovered Mallorcan olive oil and keeps ordering it at every restaurant to dip his bread in.

"I have seen beauty, beauty, beauty," he marvels, surrounded by olive trees and old country homes.

After praising talent ("It's a beautiful thing if you can find it"), Keitel says he is happy to have worked with "directors who have left their mark on film, the best." He notes that he and Martin Scorsese began working in the industry together, and that he was in Quentin Tarantino's first film. These days, he is about to shoot with Greek maestro Theo Angelopoulos, and Scorsese will produce his next movie.

Keitel also has fond memories of the movies he has made with Spanish directors: José María Sánchez, Fernando Colomo, Gerardo Herrero and Antoni Aloy (the actor stars in his only movie). "Everyone needs to get started - so did the directors who gave me a chance."

During his stay in Mallorca, Keitel had dinner with the designer and activist Sybilla, whose designs both he and his wife find fascinating. He also got the Spanish actress Rossy de Palma to prepare a paella for them.

Keitel believes the film industry will survive the crisis because Hollywood is very good at securing funding. "It doesn't need to be taught how to make money," he notes, adding that on the cultural side, Hollywood still has much to learn. "Avarice is the great economic problem."

He also defends screening European movies in their original version with subtitles in the United States, to hear the real voices, "without losing the essence."

The man is in no hurry. He laughs and gesticulates. He dabs a drop of egg yolk from the corner of his mouth, and his make-up man quickly re-emerges. Who is Harvey Keitel, really? "One day in 1992, during the shoot of Reservoir Dogs, a journalist said to me, 'Actors think of you as a guru. Do you see yourself like that? How do you deal with it?' 'I can't answer that, you'll have to ask the disciples'."