Michael Caine: The Hollywood Interview

Sir Michael Caine.

THE NOT-SO-QUIET ENGLISHMAN
Sir Michael Caine gives the performance of his career in The Quiet American
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article appeared in the December 2002 issue of Venice Magazine.

It’s fair to say that Michael Caine was one of the cultural architects that helped change the world during the 1960s. As part of the first generation of working class English artists that helped give that turbulent decade its voice, Caine, along with fellow blue collar blokes Sean Connery, The Beatles, Joe Orton, John Osborne, David Hockney, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Terence Stamp (to name a few) gave the English working class a voice, and a spotlight, into the forefront of popular culture, so much so, that middle and upper class English speaking kids the world-over suddenly turned into cockneys, accent and all, seemingly overnight.

Born Maurice Jospeh Micklewhite in St. Olave’s Hospital London, March 14, 1933, Caine was the first of two sons born to a fish-market porter and a charwoman (cleaning woman), who grew up poor in London’s tough East End. After doing his military service in Korea as an infantryman, Caine found the only job he could upon his return home: as an assistant stage manager with a repertory company, gradually working his way up from bit parts, to featured roles on the stage. Initially changing the marquee-unfriendly “Maurice Micklewhite” to “Michael Scott,” Caine spotted a cinema marquee for The Caine Mutiny one afternoon and was struck by a thunderbolt. Michael Caine was thus born.

More stage work, and many lean years, followed, culminated by Caine’s understudying pal Peter O'Toole in “The Long and the Short and the Tall,” a role that Caine later assumed when the show went on tour. After doing bit parts on television and in film, Caine landed his first major role in the international hit Zulu (1964) playing, ironically, an upper class fop in Her Majesty’s army. The following year Caine began his path to stardom with the landmark role of working class spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (Caine would repeat the role in two more features and one TV-movie), cementing it with the sleeper hit Alfie in 1966, also earning his first Oscar nomination for the eponymous lead role, an unrepentant womanizer in swinging London.

Caine quickly became one of the most prolific film actors in the world, averaging 2-3films a year, an average that continued until very recently (now he’s slowed down to a mere 1-2 films a year). To date, Caine has appeared in 132 features and television films. Just a few notable titles in that bunch include: The Italian Job (1969), Too Late the Hero(1970), the noir gangster masterpiece Get Carter(1971), Sleuth (1972), John Huston’s classic The Man Who Would be King(1975), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), California Suite (1978), Dressed to Kill (1980), Educating Rita (1983), Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters(1986) for which Caine won his first Oscar as Best Supporting Actor, Mona Lisa(1986), the superb telefilm Jack the Ripper (1988), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels(1988), A Shock to the System(1990), Blood and Wine (1997), Little Voice(1998), The Cider House Rules(1999) for which he won his second Best Supporting Oscar, Philip Kaufman’s Quills(2000), Last Orders (2001), and most recently Ausitn Powers in Goldmember (2002), playing Austin’s dentally-challenged dad, Nigel Powers.

Caine’s latest venture offers up the finest performance of his very distinguished career. In Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American, adapted from Graham Greene’s legendary novel, Caine plays Thomas Fowler, an expatriate British journalist living in 1952 Saigon who enjoys a cushy life as The London Times’ Vietnam correspondent. Fowler also enjoys smoking opium, chatting up friends at the Continental Hotel bar, and the favors of his mistress, a beautiful young Vietnamese woman named Phuong (played by newcomer Do Thi Hai Yen). When an American aid worker named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) arrives on the scene, Fowler finds his carefully laid world suddenly shifting beneath his feet, both personally as Pyle takes an interest in Phuong, and politically, as the Communist rebellion in Vietnam starts to take shape. One of the year’s best films, the Miramax release is currently playing in Los Angeles.

Michael Caine was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in November of 2000 (under his real name of Maurice Micklewhite) and also owns several successful restaurants in and around London, as well as one in Miami. Currently shooting the film Secondhand Lions in Texas (in which he co-stars with Robert Duvall and Haley Joel Osmet), Mr. Caine made a brief stopover in L.A. recently to be honored at a tribute held at the American Film Institute’s annual film festival.

You’ve made a career of playing some wonderful, morally ambiguous characters, and Thomas Fowler in The Quiet American certainly falls into that category.
Michael Caine: Well, it’s easy for me to play morally ambiguous characters because I’m not. (laughs) You always want to be what you’re not. I’m able to live and play out all these terrible things on film, while in reality I’ve never done any of them. I’ve been very happily married to the same woman for 30 years in real life, while in the picture, I’ve got a 20 year-old mistress. I’ve never done these things in real life, but as an actor, I get to do them all, and get paid for it!

What were your impressions of Vietnam while you were shooting there?
Every conception I had about Vietnam was a misconception. I thought it would be bombed to smithereens, but it’s not because the Americans never bombed the cities. I thought the Vietnamese would look at me and think I was an American and be very bitter towards me. Never. I always got a very warm reception and the Vietnamese people love the Americans.

Did they know who you were?
No, they had no idea. They know who I am now, because all those little boys who sell you cigarettes, chewing gum and postcards on the street corners in Hanoi, will sell you copies of Graham Greene’s book The Quiet American, as well. That’s how well-known the novel is. But they had no animosity towards Americans for a couple reasons: first, the Americans never bombed the cities, which is part of why they lost the war, and the Americans were the first invaders who came and didn’t want to conquer them. All the Americans wanted was to give them a government they didn’t want, and they didn’t mind that.

Caine in The Quiet American (2002).

You and Brendan Fraser had a wonderful chemistry together.
Oh yeah, Brendan’s a wonderful actor. Brendan has played all these goofball parts and it’s such a surprise to see him be so serious. He’s a smashing guy, too, so it’s nice to work with people you like who are also skilled at what they do. I’m working now with Robert Duvall and Haley Joel Osmet, so I can’t grumble.

Phillip Noyce has always struck me as a technical director and an actor’s director, a rare combination.
Very much so on both counts, and very much a perfectionist. He wants every little thing just right.

There’s a lot of buzz that your performance in The Quiet American is the finest of your career. That’s saying a lot when you take your body of work into account.
I think it’s the best I’ve ever done, as well. I can’t do any better than that, at the moment, although hopefully I will next year. (laughs)

When watching you play Thomas Fowler, it occurred to me that journalists have to have many of the same qualities as actors, don’t they?
Yeah, hours and hours of waiting around, and then something really nerve-wracking happens. The same qualities applied to when I was a soldier: hours and hours of boredom followed by a few moments of abject terror. (laughs)

Is it also anything like becoming famous overnight?
When you become famous, everybody you knew from ordinary life says “Now don’t you change.” And then, everyone around you proceeds to change themselves. (laughs)

But one reason I think you appeal to such a wide spectrum of people is that you’ve always played the everyman.
Absolutely. There’s some actors who hold up a mirror and say “Look at me.” And you look because they seem to be so much better than you: smarter, better looking, more glamorous than you, and you can spend an escapist two hours with them in a cinema. The other actor, which is me, holds up a mirror and says “Don’t look at me, look at you.” People see a reflection of themselves in the work I do. When you see a film star walking down the street, everybody is in awe of them. When I walk down the street, everybody talks to me as if they know me. I don’t have that movie star barrier. Another effect of fame is that no matter what you look like, when you become famous you suddenly become tall, dark and handsome in the eyes of women. Doesn’t matter if you’re blond, short and fat, the minute you become a movie star, you’re tall, dark and handsome. Everyone wants to be a movie star. Do you ever notice that most television stars, who make millions, much more than most film actors, all try to be movie stars at some point. Look at Madonna, she’s made a fortune with her music, but she’s still trying to be a movie star.

You first achieved fame when the working class in England had a renaissance, in the 1960s. People like you, Terence Stamp, John Osborne, Joe Orton, the Beatles, all led sort of a cultural revolution in that decade, whereas ten years earlier, you probably wouldn’t have had the same opportunities.
It was a renaissance and it was brought about by the writers. When John Osborne wrote Look Back in Anger, he introduced the first working class hero in the history of the English theater. Before that, all the characters in film and theater were middle class or upper class. If you want a very sharp comparison with America, Americans, when they made war films during WW II, they made them about privates. The British always made them about officers. Someone with my accent and my background, I was a private in the British army anyway, would have only had a very small part on the periphery.

And ironically your first big break was playing an upper class fop in Zulu!
(laughs) I know! That’s what I had to do! I had to dump my whole personality and accent and background in order to get a big part in a movie.

Harry Palmer, the lead character in The Ipcress File (and its three sequels), was also a working class bloke, with glasses no less!
Yeah, up until that point, all heroes in action films had been perfect: Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor, even Sean Connery as James Bond. With the glasses, we gave him an imperfection, to make him more like an ordinary person. Also what we did in it, we had him cook a meal. One of the producers said “No, no, you can’t do that! Everyone will think he’s gay!” I said “All the great chefs in the world are men, and not all of them are gay, plus he's cooking for a woman he’s trying to get into bed! What more do you want?” (laughs) So the meal stayed, I’m happy to say. Another great thing that happened from that film was Harold Lloyd came to London, saw the film, and rang me. He said “You’re the first guy since me I’ve seen wearing glasses who’s playing the lead in a movie.” (laughs) He invited me to dinner, so I got to know Harold Lloyd, which was wonderful.

Caine as working class spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965).

You also helped a lot of guys who wore glasses, myself included, when we saw this guy with glasses scoring with all these gorgeous babes.
I helped out all those guys with glasses. They thought “I’m not such a putz as I thought I was!” (laughs)

Alfie changed everything for you.
Yeah, and you know I auditioned for the stage production several years earlier and I didn’t get it! That’s when I thought “To hell with the theater.” The greatest part about Alfie, of course, was the research.

Shelley Winters with Caine in his star-making role, Alfie (1966).

Did a lot of field work, did you?
(laughs) Right, a lot of field work.

That’s when you roomed with Terence Stamp.
Yes, and at one point Warren Beatty turned up in London and we were quite a trio, I’ll tell you.

I notice you’re not expanding on that.
I’ve been happily married for 30 years and wish to remain so. (laughs)

That was also one of the first films where the character spoke directly to the audience.
We made a mistake when we first shot it. We sort of addressed the audience as an entire audience, in a wide shot. Then we went back, and brought the camera in very close, addressing the audience as a single person, as if it was to a friend of mine. Everything I did was out of the corner of my mouth, as if I were whispering to this one mate about this girl, rather than declaiming to an entire audience, like an actor in a theater.

Caine in the British gangster classic Get Carter (1971).

One of my favorite movies of all time is the original Get Carter.
That was a film I co-produced. The reasoning behind that was, in England, the only gangster films they produced were ones where the gangsters were either stupid or funny. I grew up in that milieu and some of my friends and, unfortunately, relations were gangsters and they were neither stupid or funny. They were very frightening, dangerous people. They didn’t indulge either in what I call pornographic violence, smashing people 38 times over the head with an iron bar. They would do everything with a minimum, but with absolutely no warning. There was no “If you say that one more time, I’ll…” the punch would just come out of nowhere, and there would only be one. I always regarded film violence as sort of pornographic when children would watch someone get smashed in the face 30 times, then see them come to work the next day with a tiny piece of plaster on their face. We wanted to get the idea across that one punch took out seven or eight teeth. Or maybe if the guy had a ring out, blinded you in one eye. So when you see Carter, the violence is absolutely out of the blue, and very realistic. And the bit where I throw the guy off the parking garage and he lands on a car below, killing a family inside it, that’s because I thought ‘Well they always land on the ground, don’t they? What if he landed on a car with some women and children in it, and they get harmed as well?” I have a philosophy in life and that is once you make a mistake, it will spread. This falls over, that falls over onto that, that catches fire and then the hotel burns down.


The original trailer for Get Carter (1971) with music by the late Roy Budd.

Around that same time you did Sleuth with Lord Laurence Olivier and got to know him quite well. Tell us about Lord Olivier.

Laurence isn’t what you would think. He was a Lord, and many people with that title like you to refer to them that way. Just before we started filming, he sent me a letter saying “You might be wondering how to address me when we meet,” because of this sort of stiffness in English protocol in the class system. And he knew I was working class, obviously, and wouldn’t know how to address him. He said “My name will be Larry.” And that summed him up.

Did you ever hear the story that he refused to go into psychoanalysis because if he were “cured,” he was afraid he’d lose the compulsion to act?

No, I haven’t heard that before, but that’s the reason I’d never do it, either, not that anyone’s ever accused me of being nuts, or anything. I don’t think actors should undergo psychoanalysis. I think they should use their madness, because once you tell something to someone else, it’s over.

Caine and Laurence Olivier in Sleuth (1972).

Do you think hardship and creativity are interconnected?

Yes. For actors also a variety of emotions in a life are very, sort of, treasured possessions, because if you work in the Stanislavsky system, as I do, using sense memory, you go back to a certain place to get a certain emotion. Me, I go back to a certain place and bang, I’m in tears. And anger, laughter, big emotions like that, I know where to go, although I never tell anybody where those places are.

Speaking of anger, you remind me of a scene in Sleuth where you tell Olivier that you’re going to be the first person in your family to make something of yourself. There was such rage, and vitriol coming out of you in that scene. Knowing your background, especially, it seemed to be coming from a very real place.

Oh yes, very much so. What happens is, you realize that these (upper class) pricks destroyed a lot of people, and England’s a great place, but without the class system it could’ve been so much better. And there were so many amazing people that were just held back because of the class system, who could’ve contributed so much, but the class system just wouldn’t allow it.

But it’s much better now, yes?

Oh my God, yes! The 60s changed that. People like us came along and said ‘Look, you can have your class system, but we don’t want to join it. We’re going our own way.’ The BBC used to just play music for middle class people, violins and things and the guy used to read the news on the radio in black tie, in an evening suit! We came along and said ‘This is our music, they’re called the Beatles. These are our writers, John Osborne. Our painter is David Hockney. Our actors are Peter O’Toole, me, Albert Finney, Terence Stamp. We’re not Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Lord Olivier. These other blokes are the actors we’re gonna watch, and be. The character of Alfie, in a “normal” English play, would’ve been a three minute part of someone nobody liked, because he was absolutely beyond the pale. When Bill Norton wrote Alfie he was 62. Of course, he was living with a 23 year-old Austrian girl, so there you are. (laughs)

One of my favorite stories in your autobiography about the class system in England is what happened when you went to buy your first Rolls-Royce.

It was a bit naughty on my part, actually, because I went very scruffy on a Saturday morning. I had a piece of paper, like a shopping list, and I brought the paper out in front of the guy (at the Rolls dealership) and it said “Razor blades, toothpaste, Rolls-Royce, eggs…” (laughs) And I said ‘Oh yeah, Rolls-Royce. How much is that one?” He said “How many do you want?” (laughs) I said ‘I only want one. Are you usually this rude to people who come to buy Rolls-Royces?’ He said “Get out!” So I said ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m going to call you next week, and I’m going to drive by here in a Rolls-Royce I’ve bought somewhere else and I’m going to give you a wave, okay?’ He said “Get out!” (laughs) And that’s what I did. I drove by and I gave him a very particular wave. When Americans do it, they only raise one finger, the middle one. When the English do it, they use two fingers, with the top of the hand facing out. It’s not a victory sign or a peace sign, which is the opposite way. What that is, is the two fingers go back to the battle of Agincourt when the British secret weapon, the atomic weapon which won that war, was the British archers. And when the French used to take them prisoner, they would cut off the first two fingers, so they couldn’t use their bows any longer. So before the battle of Agincourt started, all the archers held up their two fingers, to show they were ready. That’s where that came from, and that’s what I used on the guy with the Rolls-Royce, although I didn’t fire an arrow at him! (laughs)

Caine throws a mean right, circa late 60's.

You did Too Late the Hero, also around that time, co-starring with Cliff Robertson and Robert Aldrich directing. What was Aldrich like?

Bob was great. He was a man’s, man’s, man’s, man’s man. He was tough, built like a brick chickenhouse, an ex-football player. He made very macho movies and we spent 18 weeks in the jungle in the Philippines with him. It was an amazing movie to make, but we were glad to get out of there, I can tell you. There were these little snakes all over the jungle that looked just like twigs on a tree. And they were very deadly. Well, one day before we went in the jungle, this band of little native guys came out, none over 5 feet tall, and these guys could actually smell the twig snakes and would survey the area before we went in! The only thing that worried me is if one of them had a cold! (laughs) It reminds me of a story about Victor Mature, who was a very macho sort of action star in the 40s and 50s. They were shooting a movie in Africa and Victor had to go in the river for this one scene. The director, jokingly, said to Victor, “Watch out for the crocodiles, Vic.” Victor Mature jumps out of the water. “Crocodiles?!” “Yeah, but look, this is three feet of water, plus the white hunters have been firing their guns all day, which scares them off. You’ll be fine.” Victor says “Suppose one of those fuckers is deaf?” And they had to carry him off of the island. (laughs)

When you won your Golden Globe for Cider House Rules a few years ago, you gave a wonderful speech where you said “I’ve done some great movies, and I’ve done a lot of crap.” Is there always, no matter how successful you become, that little voice in that back of your head that tells you this is your last job, that it’s all been a huge mistake?

Yeah, yeah. That never really goes away totally, although the voice is much fainter now than it was. I used to lead a life where I was struggling to make a living and I always thought that somewhere along the line it was going to stop. Now I don’t have to worry about making a living. I just do absolutely the scripts I really, really want to do. If you see me in a movie that isn’t any good, it’s because when I read the script I thought it was going to be great, and I’ve made a huge mistake. I won’t do crap movies anymore for the money or as a favor to anybody. Everything I do I absolutely believe is going to be great. I call it the offer I can’t refuse, like The Quiet American. It was the greatest opportunity I’d ever had in my life, so I couldn’t say no! And it happened when I was 68. So hopefully I’ll keep getting the greatest opportunity with each passing year.



Your character in Mona Lisa I thought was really interesting. I thought ‘Here’s what would have happened to Carter if he had lived.’

Oh yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely what he would’ve become. Well, that character is based on some of my relations. (laughs) Oh yeah, he was a really tough guy. He, and Carter, were based on one particular man I knew. He was a professional killer who’d done his time, and all that. He came up to me about six months ago, he said “I didn’t think that Get Carter was good, Michael.” And it had been based on him. I said ‘Why not?’ He said “No family life. Why do you people in the cinema always ignore this? I’ve got a wife, a mortgage, kids, one of my kids is in hospital. All you guys go around fucking all the women, flashing all their money. I’m not gonna make any money, fucking convicted killer. In Get Carter you just showed the fancy side.”

Caine and Sean Connery in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975).

We have to talk about The Man Who Would Be King and John Huston and Sean Connery.

Well that was a great experience and it could’ve been a dreadful experience if it had been done with two other men. But as it was, it was one of the happiest films I’ve ever done. It was one of the most delightful films I’ve ever made in some of the most uncomfortable conditions. One man was a very close friend and the other became a very close friend, although I’d never met John before that film.

You and Connery were struggling actors together back in London, right?

Yeah, I’ve known Sean since I was 24 and he was 27. We used to hang out at the Salisbury, where they had cheap beer and cheap food. That place helped keep us alive.

Tell us about working with Mr. Huston.

He was incredible. He didn’t tell you much, but he just watched you very closely and you knew you were doing it right just by looking at him. I said to him one day “You don’t really tell us much, do you?” He said “You’re being paid a lot of money to do this, Michael. You should be able to get it right on your own.” (laughs) Sean and I were obviously giving him what he wanted, so he said nothing. Good directors always do that. Bad directors can’t shut up.

How would Brian De Palma rate? I love Dressed to Kill.

He was great. He was the most technically-proficient director I’ve ever worked with. He really knows the technology inside out. He’s almost up there with David Lean.

You worked with Oliver Stone on his directorial debut, The Hand.

Yeah, he wrote and directed that. He was a very well-known screenwriter at that point, and won an Oscar for Midnight Express, but he decided he was going to direct this screenplay himself. I’ve always had a thing where I’ll work with a first-time director sometimes. I did it with Ken Russell and I did it with Oliver. Ken Russell worked out alright with Billion Dollar Brain, but The Hand didn’t work so well. (laughs) But you’ve got to be willing to give people a shot in this business and Oliver, of course, has gone on to become one of the great American directors.

Could you see his potential at that point?

Oh yes, I knew it was there, I just didn’t get it in my turn. He talked to me about Platoon quite a lot because I was an ex-infantryman myself, and so was he. There’s always a little bit of a bond between ex-infantrymen. We also talked quite a bit about the JFK assassination, and how there was no way Oswald could have been the lone gunman.

Educating Rita was a wonderful movie, and really reinvented your career with the role of a frumpy professor.

It was a big character change for me because up until that point I’d been playing “Michael Caine-ish” in everything. The most extraordinary thing about that role for me was the fact that it was a character in which I could find nothing of myself. He was the farthest away from myself I’d even been with a character, which is the ideal place for an actor to be. The second film I did it in was The Quiet American. But Julie Walters really helped to make me look good in Rita. She’d never done a movie before. She’d done the play, so she was very into the character, but I thought she played down, into the style of film acting, just beautifully. A lot of theater actors would have gone over the top with it. Also, I got to work with Lewis Gilbert again, who directed Alfie. Lewis was something of a good luck charm for me: both times I worked with him, I got nominated (for an Oscar)!

You got to work with John Frankenheimer, who recently passed, on The Holcroft Covenant.

Oh, I loved John. John had a tremendous appetite for life. He would do everything. He was almost a championship racing driver. He was almost a world-class chef. He was almost a world-class tennis player. He just did all these things and had such enthusiasm for everything. I thought he was a great guy, very easy to work with. The film we did didn’t turn out too well, although it was done under very extraordinary circumstances, so it really wasn’t our fault. It’s funny, I was walking in Malibu a couple weeks ago with a friend, and we passed this very odd-looking house on the beach. I said “Who lived there?” He said “John Frankenheimer.”

Did the two of you stay in touch after the film wrapped?

No, although we ran into each other a few times over the years. But the geography of the movie business is incredible. You don’t even get to see your close friends. I don’t get to see Roger Moore or Sean Connery for months at a time. Sean’s in Nassau and Roger’s in Switzerland. I’m in England. When we do manage to get together, we just resume talking like no time has passed at all.

Barbara Hershey with Caine in his first Oscar-winning role, Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

Another film where you reinvented your persona was Hannah and Her Sisters, so well that you won your first Academy Award.

That was a wonderful experience doing that film. Another instance of a great director who never tells you anything. Woody just lets you go your own way, and you wind up with a performance. It’s ironic I got the Oscar for doing a Woody Allen movie, who says nothing but disparaging things about the Oscars.

Tell us about Mia Farrow, whom you had most of your scenes with.

Mia’s great. I’ve known Mia since she was 16 or 17, so acting with her was very easy. It was a bit like working with a family because our apartment in the film was her apartment in real life. It was all very sort of intimate, doing scenes in her bed with her lover directing us. It was quite difficult, really. (laughs)

Like many actors who do Woody Allen films, I noticed that you took on the cadence of Woody himself when you played that character. Sure, when you take on the cadence it helps you to do the material. I did a film written by Neil Simon once, called California Suite, and one day he said to me “You can really do my stuff. I’ve been watching rushes.” I said ‘Yeah, do you know what the secret to doing Neil Simon is?’ He said “No.” I said 'You can never stop moving.' You can’t do it standing still. It’s like Groucho Marx coming through, who also never stopped moving.



Another favorite of yours is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

That’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had doing a film. It was a comedy, which was fun, plus I was three months in the south of France. They gave me a villa in St. Paul. It’s tough duty, but someone’s got to do it, you know? (laughs) I watch it today and it still makes me laugh. It’s one of those films where you’re just waiting for your favorite bits to happen. For me, it’s when I’m hitting Steve’s knees playing Dr. Shauffhausen. (laughs) I’m laughing now thinking about it. It’s funny, Steve Martin is such a serious guy. People would come on the set and expect Steve to be wild and crazy, when in fact I’m the nutty one, and he’s the serious one. We’re exactly the opposite of what each of us was on-screen. Steve’s a big computer nerd, as well, and I know nothing about them. But it was one of those films where everyone was giggling, lots of outtakes exist somewhere. Glenne Headly especially was a big giggler.

The old saying is “dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Is it easier for you to do a Get Carter than it is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?

Well, Get Carter required such a controlled performance. It was all about the stillness, about the fact that you didn’t react to something someone said, says a lot more about the character than flying off the handle would. It’s like room with minimalist furniture, Get Carter. Whereas Dirty Rotten Scoundrels wasn’t quite over-the-top Victorian, but it came close. Slightly over-furnished. You have to time comedy to silence, you see. The crew can’t laugh, otherwise they get fired. So yes, at the end of the day, comedy is much more difficult.

Another movie you did that people don’t talk about very much, but is a wonderful film, is A Shock to the System.

Yeah, that was a lovely little film, but it was too small for its own good, really. It got lost. It was the sort of film, were it made today, would be great as a film for HBO, or something. But at the time, it just got lost in the system, no pun intended. (laughs)

Your master class on acting, which has been released both in print and on video has become a staple for young actors learning the craft. How did that come about?

Simple: the BBC kept chasing me for two years. They had a series called “Master Class” where they covered everything: ballet dancing, play-writing, opera-singing. They wanted me to be the one who did the movie acting class. I said ‘Well, I don’t know anything about movie acting,’ but in the end it did seem I had some stuff to tell. I didn’t write the book, they just transcribed what I said on the program, although the book contains the full four hours, and they cut it down to half an hour for the video. There’s nothing written that tells you very much about movie acting. There certainly wasn’t when I was a young actor. The only one I remember was by a guy called Pudovkin, “The Art of Film Acting.”

You explain an interesting method called “acting with one eye.”

Right. You put one eye on the person you’re doing the scene with, and the other eye in the lens. You don’t look in the lens, but…it’s rather difficult to explain. If I’m facing you, generally I’ll have my two eyes facing your two eyes, right? Now if the camera is on your right, I take my left eye and put it in your right eye so my left eye goes into the camera. That’s the best way I can explain that.

You won your second Oscar for Cider House Rules. Your New England accent was amazing, and that’s an accent that most Americans have a hard time doing.

The attitude I took with that was, I said to my dialect coach, who was excellent, on my very first day ‘Look, I don’t want to be that British actor who’s doing the best American accent the audience has ever heard a British actor do. What I want to do is be an American, who’s doing nothing, and I don’t want the audience to notice I’m doing an accent.’ And that’s what happened. It’s funny, when I first met my dialect teacher, he asked if I could do an American accent, and I did it for him. He paused and said “That’s California, Michael.” (laughs)

You worked with the great Philip Kaufman on Quills.

Oh, he was wonderful. Philip really goes out on a limb with stuff, you know? I’d love to work with him again. I really, really enjoyed that character because very rarely do I play a total villain. I can usually find some redeeming feature, but that man had no redeeming features! (laughs) Geoffrey Rush was wonderful to work with, as well. One of the best movie actors around.

What’s it been like working with Robert Duvall on Secondhand Lions?

Wonderful. We’re like brothers, Bob and I. We play brothers in the film. Haley Joel Osmet is terrific, too. The three of us are a trio. When we walk onto the set and get the accents going, it’s just it, you know? Haley I call my partner. I really love him, a good kid.

You’ve overcome incredible odds to be where you are today. You’re a true success story. What would you say to other aspiring actors, writers, or directors who are struggling and, like yourself, didn’t come into the world with a lot of opportunities or advantages?

Don’t listen to any negatives. Don’t ever let anybody say anything negative to you and let it affect you at all. Because people will tell you to get out, stop doing, that you’re no good. Don’t listen. Just don’t listen. Go ahead. The reason advice is cheap is because that’s all it’s worth.