SIR MICHAEL CAINE OFF SET INTERVIEW
Sir Michael Caine was born into a working class family in south east London in the 1930s and shot to international fame when he was cast in his first major feature film, Zulu. He has since gone on to be nominated for six Oscars winning two Best Supporting actor awards for his performances in Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules. In his exclusive interview with TCM he talks about his background, how his career in acting took off in the heady sixties, his pals during that time, his love of movies, his admiration for directors like John Huston and actors such as Humphrey Bogart. As Caine discusses in his interview, he regards himself as retired these days only responding to offers of roles in films that really excite him.
Sir Michael Caine on becoming an actor
I was one of the first generations of young people who wanted to become an actor because they saw an actor on the screen. Before me people used to become an actor because they went to the theatre, so it was very much a middle class or an upper class kind of thing in very class conscious England until this happened. Then working class children who had never seen acting except at school, in the school play which is where I started when I was ten. So the first acting professional I saw was on screen and I became absolutely enamoured with the cinema. I’m one of the greatest film buffs, I’m a filmgoer, I see every film no matter what the quality.
I adore the cinema and I became a stage actor in order to learn what to do but my final destination was always to be a movie actor and once I got a part in a movie I never went back to the theatre.
I never went to drama school. I came from a milieu which never knew what a drama school was, let alone go there. If someone had told me that you could go to drama school and learn acting I would have called them an idiot.
I was told to give it up [acting] so many times. My friends would tell me as a favour, not my enemies, my friends would tell me, “stop knocking yourself out, you’re never going to get anywhere. Even my own agent!”
Working class actors like me, Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole came along in the 60s just at the same time as the writers, John Osborne and Arnold Wesker who started writing about working class people.
Sir Michael Caine on being cast in Zulu
But the strangest thing was that in Zulu, I was completely cast against type as a very upper crust officer and I am the exact opposite of that. I’m a cockney I don’t think an English director would have cast me in that character but the director was Cy Endfield who was an American. I went up to play the cockney working class corporal in the movie and I was just leaving the bar of the Prince of Wales Theatre and he stopped me at the door and said, “Can you do an upper crust accent?” and I said, “Yes”. I’d been in rep [repertory theatre] for ten years and I could do any accent, “Because you don’t look like a cockney to me”. He thought I should look like some kind of gangster, that’s what we are, all my relations. But I didn’t look like that I was a tall slender guy with long blonde hair. I mean I was very tough inside but I look a little bit gay on the outside. And he said, “I think you’d make a good officer” and he cast me as Lt Bromhead in Zulu.
Sir Michael Caine on the 60s
Before the 60s everything was in black and white, after the 60s it was in technicolour. In the 50s we were still on rationing so life had been very drab. Also, there was the class system which we decided to dump.
It was quite extraordinary because everyone you knew in the 60s became famous. I shared a flat with John Barry who wrote all the great Bond music. I shared a flat with my barber who was Vidal Sassoon. I shared a flat with Terence Stamp, I opened a restaurant and got this painter to do the logo and that was David Hockney.
I remember there was an actor I knew who was down on his luck and he was in a worse state than me. He said, “I’m going to give it up, I’m going to write instead” and we all laughed and that was John Osborne and he wrote Look Back in Anger.
I worked with an actor called David Baron and then he said it was too tough and he was going to give up and he said, “I’m going to write plays under my own name”, I said “Isn’t David Baron your real name?” He said “No”, I said “What’s your real name?” and he said “Harold Pinter”.
It was quite an extraordinary era. Terence Stamp had a brother, he was very intelligent, very bright but wasn’t skilled he was working class exactly like myself. And he came back from the pub one night and said “I’m going to be a rock and roll manager”. So we all said, “Oh really? You’ll need a group” and he said “I’ve got a group from the pub” I said, “What’s it called?” he said “The Who”. So there was no way you could go wrong then.
Sir Michael Caine on Get Carter
Get Carter was a film that I produced with Michael Klinger who owned the rights. And it was a film that was meant to show that gangster violence is swift, sudden and without warning. I come from real gangsters and they don’t say “If you do that I’m going to kill you” They just do it. We wanted to show that one punch there [points to face] and four teeth are out and your lips are swollen for six weeks and you have probably broken your nose. And we got reviews like it was the most violent movie of all time and I said “How many people did we kill? Two!” We wanted to show what real violence was like and what real criminals are like.
Sir Michael Caine on directors
I’ve been very lucky with directors right through from Joseph L Mankiewicz (Sleuth), John Huston (The Man Who Would Be King, Escape To Victory) and Joe Losey (The Romantic Englishwoman). I finally ended up being directed by John Huston playing Humphrey Bogart’s character in The Man Who Would Be King. John Huston rang and said, “Would you like to do The Man Who Would Be King?” and I said “Yeah, I’ll do anything with you”, cos I loved him.
John was the easiest director. You’d say to him “John, you’re not giving me any directions” and he’d say, “You’re earning a great deal of money to do this Michael, I think you can do it on your own, you don’t need me”. But when he did give you a direction it was succinct. I was a couple of days into The Man Who Would Be King and I was doing a long speech and he cut me right in the middle and actors hate that because you have to do it again and I hadn’t made any mistakes so I said, “What is it John?” and he said, “You can speak a little faster Michael, he’s an honest man”. And there was the whole character in one line and I’ve never trusted anyone who speaks slowly since!
Sir Michael Caine on favourite films and actors
One of my favourite films of all time is Point Blank. I love Lee Marvin, he’s another one of my favourite actors. I never met Bogart but I knew Lee very well. I thought Point Blank was a knockout gangster movie, really that’s the one I loved. That’s why I wanted to do Get Carter, I wanted to try and do a movie like that.
I’ve been an actor for a very long while, 52 years. I’ve always been a leading actor in a movie rather than a movie star based on one personality. You get some movie stars who refuse to do thing saying [affects a pompous tone] “Michael Caine wouldn’t do that”. In my case I would do anything, change my hair, my voice, looks whatever.
My definition of the difference between a movie star and a movie actor is that a movie star gets the script and says how can I change this to suit me? Whereas the movie actor gets the script and says how can I change me to suit this?
You don’t retire from the movies, they retire you. The scripts stop coming or the money is too small to make it worthwhile getting up in the morning. The way I work, I regard myself as retired; I only come out of retirement for offers I can’t refuse. I haven’t worked for a year but I wanted to play Batman’s butler, I wanted to play Nicole’s dad in Bewitched and there’s another film, The Weatherman where I played Nicolas Cage’s dad. They were all parts that fascinated me. I wasn’t ready for a lead after The Quiet American, which was a tough role for me and cured me of playing leads for a while.
Now I will do something there are three pictures I want to do, small parts. One [Children of Men, released September 2006] is with Alfonso Cuaron who directed Y tu Mama Tambien, I wanted to work with him and then Christopher Nolan who directed Batman is doing a smaller film called The Prestige about magicians and it’s very interesting. And we’re going to make The Joker next year.
Jude Law and I have got together and we might remake Sleuth. We’ve got a very good script by Harold Pinter that might be worth doing with me in the older Olivier part and him playing my part but we haven’t got that set up yet.
Sir Michael Caine on classic movies
I think classic movies are terribly important and it’s great because children can see them on TV. I have a list of the 100 greatest films of all time and if you have to buy a present for someone who’s got everything and if they are film buffs that’s what I buy them cos there’s many of them they haven’t seen.
My favourite movies are The Third Man, Casablanca and On The Waterfront and they are all in black and white.
My favourite line is from Casablanca. She says, “Do you remember Paris” he says, “Yes I do, the Germans wore grey and you wore blue”. |
