The 72-year-old actor-director, who is known as a method actor when it comes to getting under the skin of the characters, decided against visiting the man in prison, rather he opted for watching video tapes of the man in order to get into the character, reported Ace Showbiz.
"I've talked to people about Phil who offered. I didn't particularly seek out who he was," he said.
Explaining why he did not feel the necessity to meet the real-life person, the veteran actor said, "It would have been meeting a different person. Now he's been convicted and he's in prison... This person I'm playing is the guy who was there before he was convicted. I played him as what I believe David Mamet wrote and how I believed to interpret him."
While there's a picture of him standing next to Spector spreading on Internet, he said that he did not know the music producer.
"On the Internet there's a picture of me and Phil about 20 years ago. We're standing next to each other and somebody's taking our picture and we're both looking into the lens of the camera - I didn't even know him," he said.
The HBO movie will premiere on the channel in February. Directed and written by David Mamet, it focuses on Phil Spector in a 2003 trial where he was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting a struggling actress in his mansion.
