Acting in Film

account was full of lint.
    Chances are you've had some formal higher education. Well, to me and my parents, going to grammar school was higher education. I had no classes to go to, or instructional videos to watch. But I was a tremendous reader of books. And from the pages of those books I discovered what other people's lives were like. They weren't like mine. And I became determined to change my life. I wasn't exploring the possibility, I was determined.

    If you really want to become an actor, but only providing that acting doesn't interfere with your golf game, your political ambitions, and your sex life, you don't really want to become an actor. Not only is acting more than a part-time job, it's more than a full-time job. It's a full-time obsession. Anything less and you'll fall short of the mark.

    BLUE ICE
    Directed by Russell Mulcahy. M&M Productions, 1992
    Pictured with Sean Young

    X, Y AND ZEE
    Directed by Brian G. E Iutton. Columbia Pictures, 1971
    Pictured with Elizabeth Taylor
    You can master every word of this book until you can recite it backwards in your sleep. But without a will and a drive like a locomotive, without the cool steely focus of a safecracker, without the tenacity and wiliness of a weasel, this book and a dozen years of intensive scene study won't add up to diddly squat by way of a movie career. Let me put it another way: if you can imagine yourself doing anything else, forget it!
    Some actors always feel that they're "losing the light." Some little detail about a role or the auction or the production isn't quite perfect; it's the wrong director, or the right director is in the wrong mood; or the casting direc tor who was right to cast you was wrong about everyone else; or the right script but the wrong writer. Others, and I like to think I belong to this camp, are so constantly and sufficiently entertained by whatever the clay brings that we join in the game until it's pitch black outside. That's not to say that we're not aware of obstacles - we're on to them immediately. There's no obstacle course like the movies. When everything is running perfectly in the movies, it's not because there aren't any hurdles to jump; it's because everybody has seen them coming and cleared them in time and in style. And, may I add, with a certain amount of pleasure!

    After all the years in the business, some people still think of me as a professional Cockney. As if people were paid for being Cockney. I'm actually from South London, not Bow, and any day of the week you will find 1.3 million Cockneys more authentic than me. Now very few of them are in Hollywood. But they still say "Caine's a Cockney actor" as if I were some kind of lucky moron who just happened to be perched at the right bar stool when a Hollywood producer walked in.
    And yet that's also a battle that must he fought. You will have to fight the battle of your background and genetics, too. That's not to say you want to disown your past. There are a lot of tricks in that baggage we lug around with us that are worth taking out now and then. If you're a healthy, good-looking bloke there's no point in specializing in Quasimodo parts.

    My own big offensive came when I was up for my standard little Cockney part in Zulu. The break came when I got the bad news that the role I was up for had already been cast. Lo and behold, they were so desperate for somebody to play the upper-class English role, they agreed to give me a screen test for the lead. I've never looked back since. I was able to redefine what the producer and director were looking for in the part. They were after your typical pubic school chinless wonder and they wound up with me. I managed to get them to see me in a new way. But until that day, everybody in the business said, "Oh, he's a very good Cockney actor, a very fine Cockney actor, and should you ever find yourself needing a first-rate Cockney actor, you really ought to use him - not a huge role mind you - but a nice juicy little Cockney part." And despite my eighty films and umpteen different roles from different backgrounds, the battle goes on.
    Why am I telling you all this? What right does Michael Caine have to teach you how to act in film? Absolutely none. There are many actors who know as much and more. But part of the business is more than a business: it's a community. And a community where people share experiences with one another. What I know today is the result of what successful actors have shared with me. I'm just