Eckhart’s smoky love

Aaron Eckhart thinks everything goes better with a cigar, said Catherine Shoard in The Guardian (U.K.). “They’re excellent to study to,” says the actor, “they keep you company while you’re thinking.” Eckhart, who puffs six stogies a day, thinks his habit helps him appreciate life’s small joys. “With cigars it’s inherent in the mechanics that you’re going to sit down for a long time. If you go to a cigar bar”—he frequents one in Malibu—“you’re going to feel your bottom on the chair, the feet on the ground; you’re going to have two or three coffees. We watch ball games together. And nobody else in their right mind will go in there because it stinks so bad.” Are there any women in the club? “Let me tell you a secret about women and cigars.” He leans forward. “Let’s say I’m dating a girl and at first she’ll have whatever concept of a cigar, then let’s say we are intimate. By a week or two she will be begging to smoke a cigar before we kiss. It’s incredible! It becomes part of the intimacy, which is extremely weird because you’d think it would be revolting. I mean, if you polled the public whether it was worse to beat your grandmother or smoke a cigar I don’t know who would win. People freaking hate cigars.”

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