Steve Buscemi: Why does it always rain on Steve?

He was born on Friday 13th but, as he tells Charlotte O'Sullivan, Steve Buscemi never let a little bad luck get in his way

Steve Buscemi once danced with a friend of mine. "He did this hip-swinging, Latin thing," she tells me, "very tight, no arms flailing. No, really, he was very cool. Honestly."

It's a funny thing about Buscemi. He's one of the most enviable actors around, a man who's worked with the best in the indie business (Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, Altman, Scorsese), who can also brighten the dimmest blockbuster (Con Air, Armageddon, Big Daddy). And on top of that, he can direct (as those who've seen his debut, the beautifully grubby bar-fly drama Trees Lounge, will know).

And yet, there's still something a little too real about this morgue-pale, floppy-thin Irish-Italian for him to count as a bona fide star. Like those other mainstream outsiders, Steven Soderbergh and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Buscemi's charisma comes at a slant. Seen head on, he cuts a rather vulnerable figure. So you wind up feeling that, for all the adulation and big bucks, he may just need all the help he can get.

Maybe that's why the news that Buscemi was attacked in a bar-room brawl in April (he was stabbed in the throat, face and arm) didn't come as that much of a surprise. People like Brad Pitt don't get stabbed in bars; Buscemi does.

Then there's the fact that the 43-year-old's second film, the intense prison drama, Animal Factory, hasn't even had a proper release because its financiers are currently rowing with its distributors. Again, bad luck that no Hollywood sprinkle-dust can make disappear.

He's in town for an interview at London's National Film Theatre – this month, they're running a Steve Buscemi season, as well as using Animal Factory to open Crime Scene, the annual festival of crime fiction and film. My interview will take place on the phone (after his long flight, he's not up to a face-to-face). So that memorable mug, with its bubble eyes, tarantula teeth and clown lips – a face so twitchy that you get agitated just looking at it – can only float before me as I ask to be put through to his hotel room. The voice, though, ("Hi," cough, "this is Steve"), is purely him, a Long Island drawl that cartoonishly splutters and tuts its way into sense.

He says, straight off the bat, that he didn't feel he had a lot of support while making Animal Factory. "The company that financed it, Franchise, was relatively hands-off creatively, but it was very involved [wry laugh] in us getting it done on time, no matter what. The fact is, they didn't really care about the material – they just wanted it to be under-budget and for us to get name actors so they could sell it later."

It was a tough shoot. In the first week, they were filming in a real prison, so there was "lots of noise from the inmates" and "a couple of disturbances" that made Buscemi's own drama, which features a lot of grim, out-of-the-blue violence, feel particularly authentic. "I had very little control over the environment," he muses, "which I guess was apt."

I mention a story he once told about life on the Trees Lounge set. Having told a little boy that he was no longer needed for a particular scene, Buscemi saw the boy's "deep disappointment", and felt like he'd scarred him for life. The rookie director scurried off to the toilet, locked the door and "practically broke down in tears".

So, did he scar anyone for life on Animal Factory? Buscemi chortles. "I scarred my own life."

Animal Factory is about a tough, bright con, Earl (Willem Dafoe), who takes a pretty rich kid, Ron (Edward Furlong), under his wing and spends the rest of the film wondering if he should save the kid or just screw him. That tension is what makes the film more than just an ain't-prisons-awful exposé. A scene in which Earl and Ron play ball together at night is gorgeously lit – they look like archangels – later, the two play-fight, Ron's face bobbing up from under Defoe's sinewy body, purple with fury, but also fear. He doesn't know how much he can trust Earl. Neither does Earl.

Interestingly, one of Buscemi's earliest films, Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup, has him as a naive, struggling young director swept off his feet by a mobster who, so he says, just wants to help (though, in this case, the ulterior motive isn't sexual). I ask Buscemi if he's ever been in one of these relationships, and he ums and ahs, saying how much he always admired the older actor, John Cazale, even though he never met him.

So, no one closer to home? "Um, I've had... I guess when you're younger, you do look for those relationships where someone older will show you the ropes and protect you from dangers."

So was there anyone specific? Buscemi takes a long breath.

"Well, there was this guy I used to move furniture with. It was just after I'd moved to Manhattan, he was my neighbour and he was 15 years older than me, and I guess he took a liking to me and he showed me the ropes. And, because he moved out of Manhattan and then back again, he ended up living with me for a while and robbing me."

Jeez, that was not where I thought the sentence was going. "Yeah, well," sighs Buscemi, "he was a very charming guy and I opened myself up too much. He knew too much about me, where I kept my money. I made it so easy for him. And he was a struggling addict – drugs and also drink." I hear a metaphorical shrug coming all the way down the phone. "I looked up to him and he ended up taking advantage of that, which was a big shock.

"But, you know, it was also kind of a relief, because otherwise he was never going to leave, and after that I never saw him again."

The mixture of loyalty and passivity in Buscemi's voice – not to mention the automaton-like honesty – is astonishing. It's like something from a Dostoevsky novel. But it's how he talks about all his old friends.

Cabaret veteran Rockets Redglare, for example, (who, like so many of Buscemi's buddies, pops up in Animal Factory) was the man who gave Buscemi his first break. So he's a proper mentor figure? Another cough. "Actually, Rockets died recently. He had a blood clot, but it was a whole load of things – he'd been struggling with substance abuse for a long time, later on with drinking." Well, everyone has their flaws... Buscemi snorts. "Anyone who knew Rockets will at some point have lent him money. He was a total con artist and hustler, and that was sad. He needed to get help... But he was so charming, he was a real friend."

I'm beginning to get a rather peculiar sense of Buscemi's social circle. Even the recent bar-room incident in North Carolina is taking on a new aspect. On that occasion, as Buscemi admits, he was trying to "separate people", one of them the actor Vince Vaughn, (Buscemi's co-star in the upcoming Domestic Disturbance), the other a local, who were "having words".

"There was no fight that night," says Buscemi, categorically, "there were just words and we were just trying to go home. It was a weird and scary thing, but I'm not usually in that situation." But he goes on to say, "Maybe I shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place."

Trees Lounge, which Buscemi has always said was semi-autobiographical, is full of such fights. In fact, his character, Tommy, does actually break up a potential bust-up at one point, and later tells his young friend, Debbie (the wonderful Chloë Sevigny), "I'm no good at fighting, they just kick me around for fun". Whatever he says, he does seem to have a nose for trouble, a gift for getting in the way of fairly desperate people. Both Trees Lounge and Animal Factory have a teenager attempting to escape their violent, male-dominated, drug-dominated environment – Buscemi himself seems to be in two minds whether to stay.

Of course, that's not the whole story. He's been happily married to choreographer and film-maker Jo Andre for many years now, and is clearly besotted with their 10-year- old son, Lucien. And maybe that semi-fighting spirit is also what makes his work so exhilarating. He certainly is fearless when it comes to choosing projects. He's now trying to raise money for Queer, based on the William Burroughs' novel.

"Yeah, it's proving difficult," he says wryly, "but in the end we'll do it, we'll get the money and then [big laugh] I'll complain again because there's not enough money or time".

Buscemi has plenty of good acting stuff coming up (he plays sad-sack loner, Seymour, in Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World, and a Jew forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz in The Grey Zone), but it's directing, with all its dangers, that he wants to focus on. "Then I wouldn't have to play Mr Peach in Reservoir Dogs 2 or something," he once said ("Did I?" he asks, nervously). "The point is, Trees Lounge turned out so much better than I dared hope. I wanted that feeling again. With each film I do," he says through a string of embarrassed coughs, "I feel a little more like a real director."

So this latest disaster with Animal Factory and Franchise (the NFT had trouble even getting hold of a print) isn't causing him to lose sleep. "I think Sean Penn's The Pledge was financed by them, too, and I read that there was a real brouhaha over that," he says cheerfully. "I don't know who's accusing who in this present case, I just know that it's all about money. In general, I don't have a lot of control with regards to this film. But I have got my own print. So if people are interested, I can show it to them."

It's all beginning to make sense. Steve Buscemi may have it tougher than your average celeb, but he doesn't mind. "Don't forget, I was born on Friday 13th," he says earnestly. And I always liked that. I thought it was great."

So he's not entirely in control. So sometimes he's too trusting and gets taken advantage of. Big deal. It's rather enjoyable to worry about Steve Buscemi, but quite unnecessary – he thrives on his bad luck.