Sir Michael Caine UK Interview

[Music] thank you now tonight we pay tribute to one of our best loved actors he's made nearly a hundred films but none of them could compare with the story of his own life born in a slum he became an international film star and a knight of the realm he's won two oscars and a reputation which grows as he gets older now in his 70th year he shows no sign of relaxing never mind stopping his latest film the quiet american is a work of an actor at the very height of his powers ladies and gentlemen so michael kane [Music] i think you can you can safely assume you're among friends yes i am sir michael i'm not a senior since you got tapped on the shoulder by your majesty congratulations thank you very much do people treat you differently now no nobody treats me differently no they no they treat me like all them always the same like dirt that's it we're going to explore your story tonight and uh and i must say we want to put it in a capsule something what encapsulates your life which is an extraordinary story is that you must be the only knight of the realm who once shared his bedroom with a haddock that's right yeah my my father was ability to get fish market porter and we lived in a in a prefab at the elephant and castle and he used to steal fish for for us and he always stole too much to put in a little tiny fridge it was a little fridge about that big we used to buy half pints of milk because we couldn't get a pint in there and and he he brought home some haddock at one night a lot of haddock and he was he was a stickler for health and so we my brother and i slept in the same but it was only two bedrooms my brother was three years younger and we slept in the same bedroom and he always insisted that we sleep with the windows open for fresh air you know and so it was always freezing in the bedroom so he used to keep the fish in the bedroom and he used to be on the sideboard in the bedroom and this night he put the smoked haddock in there and what i didn't know is he smoked haddock is covered in phosphorus and so in the middle of night i woke up to go to the toilet and there was all this glowing at the end of the day i thought i thought it was a ghost it's true if you put haddock in the dark smoke haddock if you have any go and do it now turn the lights out you'll see it closed just like a ghost and it's frightened the life out of me and i stopped eating fish i still don't eat fish i thought you're gonna i thought you're gonna say not many people know that no let's talk about this uh i mean you could never imagine could you i mean camberwell and then uh moving into the prefab from that point you could never imagine i suppose ever being knighted by the nightfall no no i you don't even think of being a movie star i was a big movie fan massive movie fan i used to go to pictures seven seven days a week i used to see always lots of films to see mind you was no television you know and so i i um i grew up knowing about the cinema but when i when i became an actor the only reason i became an actor it was it was several reasons actually one i couldn't do anything else i was so stupid three i wanted to meet beautiful girls [Laughter] oh i missed two didn't you always straight that was too ants free yeah i know i wanted to meet a beautiful girl so and but the serious part of it was is that i had never seen on screen in the british cinema anybody who really represented me was very rare you saw you had a working cl as a young working class man someone working class on the screen to identify with the first time i ever saw it was johnny mills in this happy breed noel coward who came from south london from clapham actually and he played a sailor and he was a cockney and he wasn't a villain and he wasn't a caricaturer he was a real person and i thought jesus that's it that's fantastic and i thought well if i can just go on the screen and play a real working class person it doesn't have to be big parts or anything just get it right this is how an ordinary working-class person in england is he's not some a cockney he's not some groveling guy with a cap going yes gov it's a fair cop and all this [ __ ] you know he's a real person you're a person yes that's right with a brother that was my idea that was your idea well it was because i failed it well very well and the persona you created around that like all great film stars i mean there's a lot of you in what you did in the movies which is what's interesting about the quiet american union is there not an offer there's none of me really is it i mean no it's it's wonderful it's a marvelous removing performance actually well thank you yeah i mean it was it was a thing that i was very fortunate to get apart this good when i was old enough to do it and then experience enough to make the most of it to my abilities i mean there are obviously other actors who could have done it better but i i did it to the greatest of my abilities when that film finished i had nothing left i just came home and sat there and i said to my wife i said that's it i just sat there and i didn't watch television i just said i've done it you know i don't want i don't want to do anything else at the moment not for a week or so that's a long time for the layoff for you man are we when you but when you when you look back at it i mean now you you are you satisfied with it now you've seen it back i mean are you happy with it yeah and where do you put it in the canon of your work where do you think it it is the best i think it's the best uh i do too yeah yeah i think it's a marvelous you play fowler who was this uh journalist who stayed on in saigon hanging on in there and he meets it's graham green's story of course yeah graham was a um an editor for time in in vietnam at that time in saigon yeah and you met him too and you met graham green yeah because i did the honorary console and i was i was sitting in a restaurant and he came over to me and he's a very imposing figure he's sick he was six feet five and suddenly there's this man up there and i said yes he said michael caine i said yes he said i'm graham green and i knew what he thought of the film i thought oh shoot then he told me and uh my food was cold by the time he finished now during your 70th year as i said which made you actually too old for this part doesn't it because yeah he was 55. yeah that's right 55 but what i did is i dyed my hair and got a lot of makeup and everything and um lost some weight and and just put blue eye drops in and hope for the best but it it works to see there's nothing in congress about i mean it has to work because you have part of the film it's a relationship you have with this beautiful girl this 20 year old yeah vietnamese girl yes cool what's her name yeah because she's gorgeous energy he's really gorgeous yeah but when i first saw her we were in rehearsal and she walked in she had no makeup on and she didn't speak english for pete's sake you know so we couldn't and she looked about 12. and she was so small i felt like a building but she she she she and philip noyce worked together the director i mean he got a performance out of it and i must say hayen worked like really really really hard by the end of the movie she spoke very good english yes and that's only 12 weeks yes she was incredible i thought did you do you enjoy doing love scenes no i never did do you no they're very awkward to do i think and i know everyone says oh yeah yeah i bet it's awkward you know but it's really and this is particularly awkward in in in as much as a difference in age you know it could have been it could have gone wrong are you embarrassed by them what does that mean well no i mean i remember we used to do love scenes but you know they're always artificial either the girl is topless right and her boobs are out and no one's looking at you they're looking at their teeth or else it's completely artificial and and the sheets like an l-shaped sheet and it comes up here on the guy and comes up with there on her and she's got this thing like that and she's moving about in the bed with a man she's been married to for 20 years trying to hide her bosom from who you know yes 150 technicians that's me you ever got carried away though no no not until the end of picture party no you never have a romance during the movie yeah because that way the man always comes off worst i've seen it doesn't you'll see people you'll see an actor in a movie you say oh he wasn't very good in it i loved that actor and he was really a good actor but he was sort of subdued that means he's screwing a leading lady [Laughter] i don't want to get sued by two parties what about the the location there you shot that in saigon didn't you yeah we saw it he shot it in saigon which is now known as ho chi minh city ho chi minh was the leader of of the viet cong who who retook his land uh and we shot it in hanoi and hoy a place called hoiyan were they welcome lovely oh yeah oh they're absolutely smashing they're such they're such nice people it's quite amazing you know and i used to look at them and think you're all viet cong and what what you do with soldiers is did the same with me in korea when i was young i was in korea when i was 19 with the americans and they you dehumanized the enemy like in in in in uh there there was called the charlie they were just called charlie the viet cong in in china in in korea we were against the chinese army and the chinese army when chinese were known as gooks and you always get some word for them which dehumanizes them you know you don't you you you don't want to kill a chinese man but you can kill a [ __ ] and that's how they work on your psychology yeah you you were you were an active soldier weren't you in in korean national servicemen but you was a national church yeah i was an infantryman an infantryman they tried to yeah what kind of action did you see um mostly patrol action it's like it was like the first world war trenches on either side and then in the middle there's there's no man's land which each side tries to control at night you know so what you get is you get bombardments all day long and then if you're not lucky you get sent out in the middle to control no man's land i was not very good at that well i never controlled a great deal of no man's land i mean the the problem that you'll face there which not many people have to face thank god in their lifetime is it it's a question of your own fear your own culture yeah you have to come down you have to come to terms with that i got for me it was rather like an initiation like in saying the masai you know they give you a short spear and say go and kill a lion to prove you're a man and to me if you think every man i'm sure every person you think if i was in a dangerous situation would i burst into tears or would i run away would i be a coward and shame myself and it's a very important thing as a young man to i accidentally happened to me in korea when we we got to position four of us there's always little patrols go out reconnaissance i mean give me a break but we got we got out there it was an officer and a corporal and another soldier and me and we got out there and then we could hear all the voices and we knew we were surrounded and then the chinese always called at you shouted at you stuff you know you want to go home and all that stuff and it's very eerie in the middle of the night you know i mean you literally pee yourself with fear sure and and and but we just sat there the four of us and we went what are we going to do and we all four of us said we'll die expensive and we were going to die expensive and we we decided that we charged we knew we're going to die i mean there must there must have been 100 of them and we charged and we charged the wrong way it's true it's true i mean there's the four of us silly suds charging fruit rice paddies we're on rice pad charging through and we charge them to surprise them towards their lines what we didn't know they'd all gone round the back behind us to stop us getting back to our lines you look at me and we just kept running and running i think we ran all night i mean we just ran around and ran and we kept running and then when we realized we were going towards then we took a left turn let's run over there we run everywhere and this is the story of my bravery as an image woman i did the first four-minute mile and there was no one to see or record it but when i got back i realized that what i'd done i said i'm going to die dear i'll die expensive and we were ready to kill as many of those sons of [ __ ] before we died we really were all four of us and we're all each one was dumber than the other one the officer was bloody stupid you know because he said to us i'll give all of you a fiver if we go up the line at the chinese line and take a prisoner i said the fight were you you insane yeah i said i'm already a mug enough i said i'm out here fighting against communism for capitalism and i'm being paid for bob a day but nonetheless i mean did you find it a valuable experience it's an extremely valuable experience because i knew then that i any situation in my life you go against me it's going to be dear you may win it's going to be it's going to cost you it's going to cost you i don't care what it is anything and i also i suppose that something like that as an actor you've drawn all that don't oh my god yes it's incredible the things you can draw you know you can draw on abject terror for a star i know how to do abject terror and i tell you what i do know which is in the film how to do shocked horror what do you mean there's a shot in the film of me when the bomb goes when the bomb goes off and i start to look around yeah that comes straight from the first time i saw bombardment results in in in in korea come straight from there that's interesting that's it's good because stanislavski which is what that doesn't mean you're mumbling scratch your armpits like marlon brando stanislavski is is sense memory right sense memory you go you go back to something in your real life to do i mean like i can burst into tears at the drop of a hat i just go to one place in my my life which i won't mention but i go to one place in my life and i'm bang gone you don't know i'm just no i nearly went there because you can't do it you can't mess about with those things it's like it's like the tools it's like a surgeon's knife you know if i tell it i'll blunt the scalpel yes you know and then the next time i do an operation it won't be there it won't be right fascinating i was gonna ask you about that later on about the the technique of film acting but in the meantime then all right so therefore you've been in the army and so therefore the part that that actually brought you to attention you made films before so the part that really made your name was zulu yes yeah and there of course against type you played the top did you play the officer i played the officer yeah and and and everybody thought i was like that until and everyone was so shocked when they met me this cockney guy had played this toffee nose gig you know and and i i based him i on on several offices that i knew and and i also used to have lunch every week and the officers mess with the cold stream guards and i knew how officers behaved with privates because i i had that relationship which had abominably right but i didn't know how they behaved with each other and stanley baker and i were playing fellow officers so i had to get that way of doing it so that's why i used to go to the office's mess and just observe how they treated each other which was very very well indeed i mean that's that of course started you off on the road to to to stardom um let's talk a little bit about mom and dad now because um dad missed out didn't he in a sense yeah my father died of cancer when i was in a real state uh um i i was out of work um i just got separated from my wife and my marriage was a disaster my first wife i had a little baby it must have been about a year or 18 months and the whole thing you know there are periods it doesn't rain it pours you know and and it was incredible it's just one thing after the other i couldn't believe it you know and it was very strange because i just did a picture called last orders with which i die of cancer in saint thomas's hospital and if you see i'm very good because my father died of cancer in saint thomas's hospital and i just copied his death that sense memory carried to an extreme you don't normally want to do it believe me but that is one of the extremes of sense memory that i believe yes yes you nurse your dad didn't you you nursed him yeah i did yeah yeah yeah but you know that was it was quite fast five weeks yes from sort of lambago we were rubbing it with lumbago and it turned out to be cancer of the liver which of course could be cured now but then it couldn't yes no yes did you get a sense now of unfinished business with him in a sense because he died yeah it was very strange because my my father was a massive gambler really terrible horse racer gambler and after i finished a couple of pictures and i had some money i bought a house at windsor next to the racetrack and after i bought it it was right next to windsor racetrack they said you do realize that there's a deed that goes with the house where you have your own gate through to the racetrack free and i went and found this little gate and i thought that's there for my dad there was another deed in the in the one where the queen had the right to go through the back road of my property i'm true she did i used to see her she'd come through in a land rover because she used to go to races there and there was this road at the back and you'd go out and it'd be the queen going through in it in in a land rover it's true story you can't make this stuff happen i'm not that clever to make this stop and she say hello mr kane how are you very well ma'am rubble a bit um [Applause] she came through my card and what about what about mummy and all this too because she was a remarkable girl now she lived to see your success yeah in fact she she had the fruits of yours success because she bought her a house yeah yeah she she got everything that she needed eventually but i mean she was a child lady uh and uh it's very funny because her her for four woman in the child lady business was mrs nellam's oh you see and mrs nellam's and my mother's neighbor's mrs michael white and they're both talking to each other and we we were both famous but our mothers wouldn't give up the jobs you know and we i was begging my mother to give up child lady because you know i was already a millionaire my mother's cleaning flops but christ's say give it up she said i'll have nowhere to go in the morning so so they mrs nellis and mrs michael white my mother are talking and mrs dunlop said my son's a famous rock and roll singer and my mum said oh recently my mum said my son's a famous actor and and mrs noah said what's his name said maurice michael white i've never heard so my mother my mother says what's your rock and roll son's name said terry nellis so my mother came home she said you ever heard of a rock and roll team called terry nellams i said yeah i said it's not his real name that's his real name see who is it i said adam faith adam faith's mother was my four woman my mother's poor lady in the cleaning that's the two of us terry nellums and morris middleweight i said mum you're nuts seems very funny i'll tell you funny when in the 60s i took she said what's all this about mini skirts and all this he said what's going on i've been in the winter i said have you seen a minute ago i said no what what was it so i said saturday i'll take you down to king's road and we walked down the king's road i said this one it's the first one this one is one now and this girl walked along with a mini apple here you know so she goes by my mother looks at her so we walk on a bit and she never said a word so i said well what do you think man she said if it's not for sale you shouldn't put it in the window the other externally i said in my introduction that your life story is just i mean there's a scriptwriter couldn't invent it if they did they'd think it was greatly exaggerated because it wasn't until your mum died that you discovered you've got a brother another brother yes she had an illegitimate child before she married my father and what happened was is that a um a newspaper was doing uh um an article on the state of national as a state of uh mental health establishments in in england and umly knows to me my half brother he had what they used to call in there another lady was a bit more bright than him you couldn't understand what he said but you could understand what she said she was his like girlfriend and the man who from i think was from the newspaper got together a group of them who were a bit more lucid the more brighter ones among which was my brother's girlfriend and he was talking to them now unbeknownst to me my mother had visited him every monday with the exception of the war for 50 years always on a monday she'd go shopping monday afternoon she always came back when with just a couple of things which she grabbed you know and she visited him for 50 years and she always had this was later told to me my mother was dead by the time i felt about this she was gone two or three years and then the matron at the hospital i said well how did this all keep quiet i mean the nurses never said it came out in this newspaper so she said well your mother used to bring a bible and then every new nurse had to swear on the bible that she wouldn't tell anyone that this was michael's brother because he had a picture of me she gave him a picture of me on the wall in zulu on that horse was on the wall so he knew who i was when he saw the television then what happened is the newspaper report was talking to all these inmates you know the brighter ones who could get some lucid answers from and his girlfriend said to report that and said you see that man over there and he said yeah she said that's michael caine's brother of course his ears went what what what what and then it came out in the paper and i i read it in the paper no the editor called me so i'm gonna print this on sunday and they were very good at he said i'm going to print this micro i think you should know you've got a brother and i said it's preposterous he said no he said no what were your feelings well i want to go and see him and when he goes all right yeah i went and saw him and i got luck you know i was very rich right now all this stuff and the most amazing thing was he was the name of the asylum was cane hill and it's just the other side of stratham somewhere because he wasn't in there then he'd been moved to a better place by the time i found him and that but then he died about 18 months after i got to know him but i i went and saw him and i had these long conversations with with the nurse because i couldn't understand what he said what had happened is he'd suffered from epilepsy when he was young and in those days they used to lock him in a cellar with a stone floor and of course he bounced in about on that you know he's probably quite intelligent but uh you know he bashed himself into in the bloody brain abnormality and she gave him to the salvation army and they looked after him until they figured he was old enough to show epilepsy god knows when that is i don't know but there was this incredible story you know it's remarkable did your dad know about it no he didn't know either oh no he killed her my father oh if we don't know him oh what do what does what were your feelings about your mom when when you this came out i mean did you feel sorry no i felt i felt absolute amazement absolute amazement how she fooled us all for 50 years every monday and when when she used to come to the country on a sunday you know and and and my driver told me i had to drive with rolls royce take my mom back to london you know and he said to me one day said she always gets out at the bus stop on stratham high road and her house was around the back by the park the strap and comment and i and the penny never dropped she was catching the bus to the asylum straight out of the rolls-royce and she always used to go around and any you know there's always plenty of stuff she'd go around pick up all the chocolates candy cakes anything nice ice cream and everything and whenever i went to see her there was never anything in the fridge i thought where'd she put all this stuff she can't be eating it it's too much she was giving it to him it's amazing and i suppose at the time she was born in victorian times was she a mother oh yeah yeah so that would be my mother was born in 1900 so so it was beyond the pale to have an illegitimate child isn't it awful that certain circumstance of the time dictated that she kept that terrible secret as she thought some of the most successful people i know are bastards let's um let's look at the movie i had to get a laugh at the end of that story i read somewhere that you said that of all the films that you made one of the most enjoyable films you made was a man who will be king yes you enjoyed that yeah yeah it's because of my relationship with sean and john houston the director that's right we we had we had a wonderful time on that and sean is one of my closest friends anyway and was before that he came into business they were doing um south pacific and they wanted all these men to sing there's nothing you know sailors there's nothing like a dame nothing and they got all these chorus boys to come around and audition you know the americans and the great just snapping like a danger and he said jesus josh there guys it's not very convincing he said that this is true story oh sure and he sent his talent scouts around all the gyms gymnasiums to get some you know big brawny guys have put out the front as american sailors and sean was mr edinburgh he was mr edinburgh and he was going to believe he was like arnold schwarzenegger it was all this and they put him in it and that's how he started the first saturday of that show i went to a party and that's where i met sean the last time i was in the queue for the doll right sean was too in front of me he was you've always got there early scotsman you always have gone very well and you had a great time didn't you i mean both on the side of the set which is on the edge of the sahara and and there was a they said there's a disco here oh really it's a disc oh would that be fun so we went this disco and it was all guys dancing with each other not because they were gay but because the women are not allowed to go out it's a very islamic area under the sahara believe me and so we thought who should we dance with in and then our chauffeur said well you dance with us so we were dancing with our chauffeurs as you do everyone does and shawn's shawn's chauffeur that's quite difficult to say it's good job i didn't have a drink before sean chauffeur was quite nice-looking but mine was really ugly so i said to sean i said to sean shouldn't they be outside with the cars they said yeah you never know i said turn them out so i said would you want to dance so we dance together they're funny i mean the stupid things that happen on there always you find yourself in these situations and you think i can't tell this back home no one's going to believe me you know and it was all like seductive and all the lights and the men weren't gay none of them were well i don't know whether they were gay they were long robes i couldn't tell couldn't tell down but i suppose locations vary don't there's some lousy ones and some some good ones what's the worst location the philippine jungle i did 16 weeks there in the philippine jungle and that was scary because they had they used to have what they called a twig snake and of course you you know mugging to me i said what's a twig snake it looks just like a twig you can't tell you know in the jungle is quite a lot of tweaks and so how where are we going to get in the jungle he said you won't see and they brought these little native men in loincloths out and they could smell these snakes and they went through just pushing way for our path to go through smelling the bloody snakes and i said supposing one of them's got a cold [Laughter] what about what about movies as well i mean you've made some some marvelous you've made some bad movies you've made a lot of movies i mean that's what happens what's the worst film you think you've ever made the swarm it was about a plague of bees killer bees from brazil and they they they screwed up the special effects i mean you know i mean i was doing acting against a blue screen but we did have one and a half million bees which we worked with right but they've had these immigrants sitting in bloody laboratories taking the stings out one by one it's true and every day and then you hear someone on the set go oh there you go there's a hot one there's a hot one in this one but the first time they let them out the first time we were like all scientists and everything i mean hank fonda and dickwood mark i mean i'm not there with a load of coal morton i'm not a load of morons they all did it but then i got the blame and we're there in the white overalls and then they let the million bees out now what we didn't know is bees do not believe themselves in their own habitation they wait to get outside now bee poop is very small obviously if you get a million of them we're looking there and there's a thin haze of brown overnight i always saw it as a poor taste of what the critics were going to do and they did it's a strange business that you're in i mean all these extraordinary situations you find yourself in and the other thing too about about you your career is very much it's like an old fashioned stars career when there was a studio system where i treated myself like a studio you did yes yeah exactly i mean you did all the movies that came away because i grew up in that system you see i knew how the bosses treat you know they go you had a contract you had to do that and do that and do that and then you've got loads of experience that's exactly and that's what happened to me i did load i don't think someone would crap but i i needed the money as well yes because i it's if you if you make a success and make money and you come from a wealthy family you don't have to give anyone anything do you understand i had to buy everyone a house the swarm was my mum's house and it was great the pizza was crap but the house the iconic michael kane you know the the the man beloved of the people who do impressions and and the the man who i mean one of my sons michael i mean he always does that scene from the italian job where you know i want to blow the bloody doors um uh i mean where did that come from that the voice for instance when you did did you find a voice someone asked me about that so you're sort of iconic and all that i said it's not iconic it's what i went back to where i started when i was looking for someone in the movies to identify with there wasn't anybody it was americans right america not american movies started they working class jimmy cagney yeah humphrey bogart and all that i i just represent i mean englishmen on this on the screen were always they were either sissies neurotic gay effeminate afraid of women having nervous breakdowns everything they were always absolutely fallible especially where women were concerned now i came on i was alfie right so that's all the women taking care of the italian job we won the football and got the gold even though we lost it in the end right and and carter anybody said you get you get your nose pushed down your throat you know so there were the three iconic things for a young man to look at you had an englishman who on the screen was all those things off the screen i'm not any of those things i'm not very tough at all and and and so i think that's what young men see is an englishman who who represents that you never said did you not many people know that i mean no peter sellers said that peter sellers yeah because i i'm always full of information and facts you know if you mention something you know and he was the first peter always had the new gadgets right so the first he was the first one to have an answer machine i called him one day he wasn't in and there was me saying my name is peter michael kane i just want you to know that peter sellers is not in not many people know that he was in but he invented that not many people know that and then everyone who rang him they got me saying not many people know that let's let's talk a bit more about the about the film career i mean you went we mentioned one two people you've worked with we went with some some giants um olivia lord olivia i mean you worked with him didn't you yes what kind of experience was that it was fascinating we became great friends but larry had was the great man of the theater you know what i mean and in the theater everybody's there to get the great man's performance you're just there you're it's all sort of groveling and everything and we started the film together and after about a week he said i unders i thought michael i i had a servant in you i see i have a partner oh really i said yes larry you do you have a partner i said i think you're the greatest actor in the world and you're a much better actor than me but you are going to have to go as hard as you can because i am never going to let you off and i'm never going to let you down i will go everywhere you go with you i said and i know my position but i'm not succumbing to it and we became tremendous friends tremendous friends don't suppose there was much he could teach he was in the sense because not throughout the movie because he was a stager exactly yes that's my point because he was a screen actor and he wasn't that he had some lovely stories he told me once he when they dropped the atom bomb on hiroshima he said he was working for sam goldwyn and sam golden didn't have a great command of the english language and he it was great headlines an entire city wiped out by one bomb and he called sam called larry up to the office and he had this los angeles time you know one bomb hiroshima gone and he said he said to larry he said larry that atom bomb is dynamite there's who directed that picture he wrote a lot of pictures for sam and he did a rewrite once and sam said to him john golden had a boy's leg dead he said joe he said it's great he said now the script has warmth and chamf [Laughter] you wonder how many of them are made up of course you know like stories about somebody else that you you of course no god oh no it was funny yeah no it was funny it at that time was a vietnam thing going on and vanessa redgrave who was like trotskyist and all that stuff was leading anti-american demonstrations against the war you know as a lot of other people were and um i should go every wednesday night with noel and have the most english thing i ever did i used to go and have dinner with noel in the saboy grill every wednesday night and anybody else who had to be around and then one day and they used to do vanessa used to do these sit down demonstrations outside the american embassy and one day in the grill vanessa came in and vanessa's about six foot one you know and i said i said no i said vanessa redgrave over there look he said she said jesse said she's very tall says good job she's a communist gives her lots of opportunity to sit down and woody allen too was somebody else that you wrote that has a significant effect on your career in the sense that the film that you made hannah and her sisters that was the first time you were recognized by the academy yeah i won the first oscar for that yeah i mean what's he i mean what what's alan like to work with as a director does he give you much or not woody like all comedy writers never says anything funny he's listening to you yes and all those comedy writers they have a pencil a piece of paper if you say something funny they go to the toilet and write it down does the oscar make a difference yes does it i mean not just yourself your own pride and fulfillment does it make a difference to you as an actor kind of part you get yes it does tremendously yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean um the oscar for um cider house rules yes brought about a situation for me where the quiet american happened uh because i was then bang several things happened you know philip noyce had a hit and everything and it all came about and that's how it got financed yes so that means it means better parts and better parts better so but what about the the the future though i mean as i said you're in your 70th year in the future well at the moment i'm i'm doing a picture it may not look like it but i'm doing a picture in austin texas with uh robert duvall and hayley joel osmond the little boy from uh sixth sense who's now 14 he's not so little anymore and then i'm going to do a picture i have yeah i did i you know i've got stuff you see i i have i i don't have to work obviously but i love to work but i don't want to do crap so i sit there i will sit like uh i sat for two years i couldn't i didn't get script i wanted to do and then i got blood and wine which i did with jack nicholson and bob rayfelson you know and and i did that then i sat and i got little voice and i sat and i got cider house rules and then i sat and i got quite american i sat for 18 months to get that but it just so happens i did quite american and then i didn't work for a year and then very quickly i got uh i played austin power's father i've got a wonderful mad comedy called the actors that i did in in in ireland but they're things that i find interesting you see it's not not about the money anymore it's not about the money oh no it's not you know you know no some of the pictures i do you know they haven't got any money and it's just the joy of doing it and getting it right or trying to get it right because you know it also i think if you give up you die you know what am i going to do watch eastenders live eastenders i lived the extenders for 30 years you know i can't watch a tv show every night no no you've got to do i think you're quite right about going on and doing it and yeah and also too i mean did you get as angry as i do about the aegis thing about the the the senses i get very ticked off about that yeah i was never ageist myself i never was i never treated old people with condescension ever and you last about two seconds trying it on me i'll tell you you know when it got no i don't know what it is but i don't know what i look like but i had a chauffeur the other day and he was helping me out in the car i was a little old lady i said get out of it now what what's it all added up to i mean that famous line from your from your early film what's it all about alfie i mean what's it all been about you think it's all about being happy and spreading the happiness that you have first amongst your family and your friends i'm very family oriented person which is probably unusual in this day and age but like you and the family comes first i adore my home people say where do you go for your holidays i say home that's where i go for my holidays i love to be home yes you know i'm i'm here from the weekend uh uh i in austin i came from austin in new york on the concord to do this show in the morning i go back to austin i work on monday morning tomorrow morning i'll get up early just so that on the way to the airport i can spend an hour in my house in the country i just walk around it get out and go on a plane have you ever had the urge to go back on stage which is where you started no you haven't never no no i always forgot i i had a terrible time on stage it was a terrible thing for me very rough uh um i was a very shy person and to go on stage for me was torture anyway and i was regarded at the stage as as a woman who always treated me badly no matter how well i treated her movies is a woman who always treats me superbly no matter how badly i treat her so she's the one i love and finally i came across a line which i just wanted you to sort of explain to me you said that if you did have one philosophy of life it was use the difficulty yes use the difficulty what does that mean well yeah i learned i got it from a i was i was rehearsing a play when i was a very young actor and i had to come in this scene it was a stage play i'm behind the flats waiting to open the door there was an improvised scene between a husband and wife going on inside and then my they they got carried away and they started throwing things and he he threw a chair and it lodged in in the in the in the doorway and i went to get open the door and i just got my head round and i said i'm sorry sir i can't get in he said what do you mean he sees a chair there he said to me use the difficulty what do you mean he said well if it's a comedy fall over it if it's a drama pick it up and smash it he said use the difficulty now i took that into my own life you asked my children they said directly anything bad happens they go got to use the difficulty how can we work what can we what can we get out of this you know use the difficulty and so there's never anything so bad that you cannot use that difficulty in if you can use it a quarter of one percent to your advantage you're ahead you didn't let it get you down you know that's my philosophy use the difficulty also added philosophy is avoid them if you can't i've been i've enjoyed talking to you i waited to do this one might show you for a while and i'm glad that we finally got around to doing it i think the the the film the quite american is is a very grown-up movie i think it's your best work but in the meantime it's michael caine thank you very much indeed so michael cohen thank you for watching and from all of us here a very good night good night [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: That's Entertainment

Views: 492,708

Rating: 4.8501687 out of 5

Keywords: Sir Michael Caine, Michael Caine, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Interstellar, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Harry Brown, The Prestige, Alfie, The Cider House Rules, Get Carter, The Italian Job, Sleuth, The Man who would be king, Dressed to kill, Little Voice, The Swarm, The eagle has landed, death trap, On deadly ground, Tenet, blood and wine, The Island, UK Interview, Parkinson, DC Comics, Alfred

Id: t-7xyd5_IfY

Length: 47min 41sec (2861 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 28 2020