[imagesource: Walter McBride/Getty Images]

Gary Busey is a strange character.

I feel like the 75-year-old is known more for his odd antics than his acting career these days, although he does have a new reality TV show called Pet Judge.

Can it be worse than The Bachelor SA? Time will tell.

Actually, one look at the trailer and it’s obvious that it will be:

Yes, a show where he presides over a court in which litigants resolve quarrels about their pets.

The man must be really, really desperate for a paycheque.

Anyway, here we are talking about him, and, following on from John Malkovich last week, the Guardian did a wide-ranging interview with the actor

Calling him a “Hollywood legend, coke fiend, brain-damage survivor, sobriety champion, spiritualist and reality-show winner”, here are some standout moments:

“I OD’d on 3 May 1990, and thank God, because I realised I’d been dancing with the devil in a very small circle and the devil was leading the dance,” he says in his deep Texas drawl. “I left the dance and said: ‘You kick on from here – I’m gone. I’m dancing on my own.’ When you do a drug like cocaine, you want to get that first hit back, but you never will. That’s gone. It’s a chase to the death when you’re addicted to cocaine”….

Image: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register

Back in the day, he and his close friend (and doppelganger) Nick Nolte [pictured above] were regarded as the hardest-partying men in Hollywood. “We were like two perfectly twin-cloned entities. We’d go to parties in Malibu and were always the last to leave. We’d be sitting under the dinner table with our panama hats on and we got known as ‘the things who will not leave’.”

Busey talks about how Death stands for ‘Don’t Expect a Tragedy Here’, his infamous Celebrity Apprentice appearances alongside Donald Trump, and various run-ins with celebs over the year.

I’m not all that interested, so let’s end with what he says about Pet Judge, which much like most reality shows, isn’t all that real:

Every so often, Busey bangs his gavel, barks: “PET JUS-TICE!” and brings the court to order. Pet Judge is a fake reality show, cast with actors, largely improvised, sometimes very funny and every bit as bonkers as it sounds. “None of the other judge shows hold a candle fire, bonfire or rocket to this Pet Judge show,” Busey says.

Good luck to him. I certainly won’t be watching.

Read the full interview here.

[source:guardian]