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Professionally, prior to 1970, I'd been an actor, an off-Broadway director and a film journalist, and I had made one low-budget film, Targets — a propitious beginning to my career. In my personal life, I had been married since the age of 22 to Polly Platt, and we had two small daughters. My father, a painter of the post-Impressionist school whom I greatly admired, was an undemonstrative man who said very little. I didn't realize, at that young age, how much I hungered for his approval or how little I understood myself.

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Making The Last Picture Show from Larry McMurtry's novel — we co-wrote the screenplay — was a challenge, because the book had no real story line. But something drew me to this tale of a declining small town, the badly parented teenagers and the sad, unfulfilled adults. Polly (production designer) and I and the cast assembled in Texas to shoot. Before I myself realized that it was happening, my wife accused me of falling in love with 20-year-old actress Cybill Shepherd. Polly was right. As I was swept into an affair with Cybill, my mother called to tell me my father had had a stroke and was in a coma.

I continued filming until that Saturday night, when I flew to Scottsdale, Ariz., to see my father, then returned the next day to Texas. My personal life was a mess. I'd been a faithful husband for nine years, but I now felt powerless to stop the momentum. Polly moved out of our hotel room, and we tried to keep the affair quiet. That week I shot during the day and saw Cybill at night. On Wednesday of that week, the phone rang in the middle of the night — my father was dead. I was alone, and I just burst into tears. It was a terrible, dark moment.

But when you're on location, you have to keep working; there is no time to think. That Saturday I flew home, alone, for the funeral. Standing by his grave, I felt as if a light had gone out in my life.

Right after I returned, we shot the funeral scene, the burial of Sam the Lion, the film's father figure. My own grief lent the sequence an added weight and sorrow. And when I look back, I can see that my passion for Cybill also intensified the film's eroticism.

By the time the shooting ended, everything had changed. The affair that both Polly and I believed would end with the movie did not. There was a painful divorce, children who were hurt. But my relationship with Cybill made me feel vital again and brought me back to a time of great inspiration. The Last Picture Show was widely hailed on release, and it opened many doors for me. While Cybill and I were living together, I made two more successful films in a row, What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon, and then three financially unsuccessful ones. Cybill and I went through some rough times, and after nine years we sadly broke up.

Over the years, I've tried to better understand my earlier actions. Looking back, I wish I'd handled the situation with Polly better. I know my daughters have suffered, and I have tried to make up for it ever since. I also wish I'd known my father better. When I was younger, he'd warned me not to get married so young. But I sometimes think if only we had communicated more, if he had told me more about sex and love — maybe I would have had the tools to better deal with those intense feelings.

Only now, after years in therapy, am I starting to come to terms with who my father was to me. I don't know if you'd call it poetic justice, but ironically my recurring role on The Sopranos is that of a psychiatrist.