As an actor, I love working with directors. As much as I love working with other actors.
I consider it an actor going to work with other actors. It's not a competitive sport, it's not to outact anybody else, sorta thing, you can be a bad actor but you don't outact anybody, you just bring your character as best as you can.
It got bloody and it got messy. There was a huge amount of work done by a tremendous Italian stunt team ... and we'd be thrown into the melee.