by Brad Balfour

G21 Contributing Editor

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Russian, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/nystate14.htm") and enter it in the box after you click through.

NEW YORK, NY, USA - SIR MICHAEL CAINE is a legendary figure, having played in countless films and making himself memorable in nearly all of them. No wonder then that the Film Society of Lincoln Center honored him on April 26th. The Annual Gala Tribute evening included highlights from Caine's extensive body of work and in-person accolades. The former Maurice Micklewhite developed his range after being informed by years of complicated roles once he started out as one of England's angry young men of film. After breaking out as a gruff Cockney in ALFIE, he has gone on to win numerous awards, from the Golden Globes to the Oscars, while being in over 100 films. In his most recent film, "THE STATEMENT", directed by veteran filmmaker Norman Jewison ("FIDDLER ON THE ROOF", "THE CINCINNATI KID"), he plays a hunted war criminal who's memorable because he's so despicable, Yet while Caine can play the part of the glamorous film star, he still a working class bloke at heart.

G21: ARE YOU AN EXPERT ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR?

Sir Michael Caine: When you've been acting as long as I have, you watch body language. It's very awkward sometimes, because people will come into a room and I will dislike them intensely and they've never said anything. You get a sixth sense about people. You watch the tiniest of things. It's the small things I use. In the first 10 or 12 minutes [of "The Statement".] I don't talk; you don't know what the hell is going on. But [my character Pierre Broussard] is suspicious of everything. Fugitives and policemen behave exactly the same. They're always looking round. If you watch a policeman, every now and then he will look over your shoulder, to see who's behind you. Not his. Yours. And they can't help it, their eyes just wander. And fugitives' eyes make you feel uncomfortable all the time.

G21: WAS IT INTERESTING PLAYING THIS CHARACTER AFTER DOING YOUR HEROIC CHARACTER IN THE OSCAR-NOMINATED "QUIET AMERICAN"?

Sir Michael Caine: I liked Fowler very much. I based him on [ The Ouiet American author] Graham Greene, who I knew, and who wrote that story when he was living with a girl in Saigon. So I knew exactly who I was playing and I knew the Far East from that period because I was a soldier in Korea. It was Greene who convinced the British government, because he was in the British Secret Service as well as being a writer --- I'm sure they must have asked him about of going into Vietnam at the time --- and of course he would have said, "Under no circumstances should you go in there." He was a staunch Catholic and had Catholic guilt. But then Greene wrote Fowler as anti-Catholic in The Quiet American.

G21: HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO PLAY?

Sir Michael Caine: At this stage of my career, I don't have to go to work - though I love working - so I try to keep it interesting. What interested me in this character [Broussard], a very controversial one, a French Nazi, is that he was as far away from me as you can possibly get without going to Mars. I did not want to make this guy sympathetic. For me, he had no redeeming features whatsoever.

	writelikegod.com
	When is the last time you talked politics with your dog? dogshatebush.com

G21: BROSSARD IS EXPRESSION OF THE BANALITY OF EVIL.

Sir Michael Caine: He is absolutely pathetic. I made him sad but I didn't want him sympathetic. I think people like him are pathetic. It's only when you get a regiment of them with jackboots and lots of guns that they're scary. As a lone, simple, little old man with a bad heart, who gives a damn? But also what is dangerous, which I think is one of the reasons to make the movie, is that he was run by powers that you never saw. And are they still there? We know Brossard's there, we killed him but what about all the other guys? The evil you don't know is the worry.

G21: DID YOU DO A LOT OF RESEARCH?

Sir Michael Caine: Quite a lot. There was a real man, [Paul] Touvier, who was pardoned by [President Georges] Pompidou, but it was such a bust they put him back in prison. Then he died in a prison hospital, I think, in 1994. But the look I had was rather like him. What we did was put the look in the costume. We looked at festivals for religious fanatics in France like Lourdes. All the men there dressed like that. It was quite amazing. I'm rather a big guy, but I wanted to be smaller, so I had the costume a size too big. I rounded my shoulders right over and I put glasses on him, to make him look ineffectual. But he's a supreme example of how, you have to remember, [many of them were like that]. Himmler was a chicken farmer --- he wasn't some great master of martial arts in judo or a crack shot. Look at Hitler - the lance corporal. I was in the army; even I hate lance corporals.

G21: THERE ARE SOME SCENES WHERE HE EXPRESSES GUILT.

Sir Michael Caine: He was guilty in my opinion,a religious zealot. And he had realized that he was guilty of a sin. The reason he killed people, and wanted to stay alive, was he wanted absolution to go to Heaven. The guilt came from a religious belief, rather than he was worried about having shot seven people.

G21: WHEN YOU'RE CREATING A CHARACTER DO YOU START WITH BODY LANGUAGE?

Sir Michael Caine: The look comes first because that helps you tremendously. Funnily enough, the first thing that comes to me is the haircut. then the look, then the clothes, and then the sense memory that you can apply to what you have, and then trying to think of people. In this case, the reason I made him so pathetic was because I had a run-in with a sort of Nazi group 30 years ago, which was kind of scary. I got this letter telling me what they were going to do. I reported it to Special Branch in Scotland Yard.

I said to them, "If I ever meet him, I'll kick the shit out of him."

They said, "You want to meet him? I'll take you to him."

He was a 70 year old in a wheelchair, and the only member of the organization.

"You want to smash his face in?"

He was so pathetic, I was nearly in tears for him. All he had to do, was write these filthy letters to me. But when you get one of those letters saying there's a bomb in your car, you shit yourself.

G21: OF THE MANY CHARACTERS YOU'VE PLAYED, WHO WERE THE CORNERSTONES?

Sir Michael Caine: I would pick out three that are the farthest from me. In my effort to make myself the best actor ... I can play Cockney gangsters in my sleep, and have done so. But to take people who are farthest away from me and make a job of it [that's the goal]. The first character I ever thought I got right, was [the one in] "Educating Rita." The second one I got right was in "A Quiet American." And this is the third one.

The important pictures for me were "Zulu," which made me a movie entity, if not famous, but 'Alfie,' made me a star in America, and internationally. It also got me my first Academy Award nomination. The "Ipcress File" was important because [it was] the first time I ever appeared above the title in a movie. And I didn't even have a contract to appear above the title. Harry Salzmann the producer said, "I'm putting you above the title anyway."

I said, "Oh thanks, Harry. That's very kind of you."

He said, "It's not kind of me. It's just that if I don't think you're a star, why should anybody else?"

"The Man Who Would Be King" is one of my favorite pieces. That is the picture that will survive after my death and will always be shown.

G21: YOU'VE WORKED WITH A LOT OF LITERARY PEOPLE, TOO.

Sir Michael Caine: I did Harold Pinter's first play, 'The Room." Harold was an actor named David Baron. He said, "I'm going to write."

I said, "Oh yeah, it'll be nice."

He said, "But I don't want to get mixed up with being an actor. I'm going to write with my real name."

I said, "What's your real name, David?"
He said, "Harold Pinter."

G21: YOU ENJOY PLAYING TROUBLED CHARACTERS?

Sir Michael Caine: I always felt like an outcast because, as I said. I come from very working class [roots], and if you becomes an actor you immediately become an outcast. They think you've got ideas above your station. And, they think you're gay. Also, they know you're going to be broke and don't want to meet you in the pub because then they got to buy you a drink -- and not get one back.

Out-of-work actors are not liked by anybody. Nobody wants to know them, I promise you. Only famous actors are liked because people bathe in their reflected glory. I was an out-of-work actor for nine years. The only other people I knew were other out-of-work actors because we were the only people who would talk to each other.

G21: SO YOU HAVE TO BUY EVERYBODY A DRINK NOW?

Sir Michael Caine: In my family I'm like the bloody Godfather. I'm a cross between the Bank of America and the Godfather. That's who I am.

THE PREVIOUS NEW YORK STATE | THE NEXT NEW YORK STATE |