Acting in Film

personally answer every letter because that would be impossible. But I do sign every photograph-I don't have a secretary who fakes my signature. Now there are some stars who refuse, temperamentally, to do any off-the-set promoting, but the only actors who get away with that get so much publicity for not cooperating that the production company is probably just as happy that they won't.
    Temperament usually comes from insecurity. Real stars aren't insecure. They say what they want, and they usually get it. I call the temperamental ones "almost" people: they can almost act, they almost know their lines, they are almost on time, they are almost stars.
    Half my energies as a leading man in a picture go into keeping the tensions down. You set the tone on the set. And when you're the leading man, you're always the one who gets sent to get the leading lady out of the dressing room if she won't come. Everyone says, "I can't get her out-Michael, you go and get her out." She's probably still in there because her hair's not right, or she's not too keen on the director. Very few leading ladies have to get the leading man out of the dressing room.

    I always try to have a good relationship with my leading lady. But that's it. You must never get emotionally involved with her. It weakens you, and it weakens the movie. If you're going to be a film star you have to be made of a certain kind of steel.
    I choose a script because the part is good for me and because it's different from the last role I did. I look for an acting challenge. But as I get older, I'm also a lot more interested in the circumstances under which a film will be shot. Will it be a little shoestring picture that will have us sitting in mud huts in Tanzania? Or are we going to be put up in the George V in Paris? I never used to look at that side of making a film. I once spent twenty-six weeks in a Philippine jungle which, looking back, could just as well have been the tropical garden at Kew, for all the difference it made to the picture. In the jungle, you can't see the sky, you can't see the scenery. All you can see is jungle. We lived for twenty-six weeks in an unfinished brothel. The rooms were expected to be used for twenty minutes at a time and were furnished accordingly. Twenty-six weeks in rooms like that. And there wasn't a girl in any of them. After that experience, I did The Magus without ever reading the script because the weather in England is lousy in January and I'd get a few weeks in the South of France out it. That choice was a bit of a mistake on some grounds, but in terms of climate, I had a winner. I close a script quickly if it starts, "Alaska: our hero is stumbling through a blizzard ... "

    It's much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. Yet you can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting of your career, made possible by a brilliant script. There ought to be an award for triumphing over the odds. But nothing is dead certain; you are always taking a risk. On the face of it, Sleuth (formerly a very successful play), starring Laurence Olivier and myself, looked promising; but it was a two-handed picture, and no film with just two actors had ever made money-that is, until Sleuth was released.

    THE SWARM
    Directed by Irwin Allen. AIP/Warner Brothers, 1978.
    Pictured with Henry Fonda.

    When I analyze myself as a screen actor, I think part of my appeal is that I am not an obvious winner. Put Sean Connery or Charles Bronson up there and you know they are going to win. But I have the air of a loser and I've often played losers in pictures. I spent a large part of my life being a loser, which I think adds an interesting dimension to my personality. It's important to understand what you convey. And you mustn't overlook or ignore the changes that occur. I was sent a script when I was on the cusp of middle age and I sent it back, saying the part wasn't big enough. They rang me up and said, "We don't want you to play the romantic juvenile; we were thinking of you as the father." Actually I enjoy getting older. It's much easier for actors than actresses. All the best roles for an actor of my type are the mature ones. I'm growing up and the roles are growing up with me, like they did for George C. Scott and Lee Marvin. So my middle years are turning out to he my best because I'm getting meatier parts. I'm quite glad to have got through the other lot.
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