With Chigurh, I saw him as a man with a mission that was beyond his control. Someone chose his fate for him. I thought of him as a man who never had sex. He doesn’t like human fluids, even his own. [Pauses] I don’t want to get into too many details, but I even imagined how Chigurh would masturbate. For the Woody Allen movie, I don’t have to imagine such things because the character is very sexual, but for Chigurh, it was important to think about how he relates to other people, even sexually. So, I think he will masturbate once per month in the dark and with a pillow. Very clean.

Ethan Coen

The book specifies that he drives a Ramcharger, and we even found the little ornament, which even looks a bit like Chigurh’s haircut, with its little curl. But generally, it’s more perverse and unusual not to follow certain conventions in a movie, than it is to do that in a novel. The thing about not always showing Chigurh kind of comes from the book, and the idea of him being ghostlike – is he human or isn’t he? – which Cormac plays with; that’s more fun to play with in a movie. I remember us saying when we were doing the script, “It’ll be successful if we can make it really scary, like a horror movie.” It had to create a real sense of dread.