Acting in Film

into the A Team, the B Team, the C Team, and the Fun Team. The A Team is just a handful: Redford, Eastwood, Stallone, and a few studio heads. I don't belong in there. Those people don't mix with the B Team or the C Team for the simple reason that they don't want to be asked for jobs. But they do mix with the Fun Team. I'm in the Fun Team. I get invited to dinner because I'm reasonably amusing, I have an exceptionally beautiful and intelligent wife, and I have the sense not to ask for jobs. But if I was in the B Team, which I would be if I weren't in the Fun Team, I wouldn't be invited.

    W990 21i1 CwW Produdons N.V. AN i 9t retened. Rhob ty Km Hsndwa
    BULLSEYE!
    Directed by Michael Winner. 21st Century Productions, 1990.
    Pictured with Roger Moon.

    Other stars can be useful funds of advice. Peter Finch told me it took him thirty years to find out that you mustn't listen to anybody's opinion at lunch. I endorse that. Eddy Robinson, who was a close friend of mine, used to advise me to buy paintings. When he died, his collection was worth millions. And Peter O'Toole told me not to play small parts, even in vehicles that would get a lot of exposure, because that would make me a small-part actor. Ile advised me to play leading parts anywhere-in rubbishy scripts, if need be-but play leading parts.
    I'm not competitive. I don't think of stardom or acting as a sort of competition. Montgomery Clift once said that jealousy of another actor was the highest compliment you could pay him. Clift thought it was healthy to loathe another actor for his performance because it was like saying, "I wish I'd done that." I don't advise actors to see things that way. It's self-destructive. If you're competitive and you're not always on a winning streak, you'll get bitter. Actually, I'm really quite vain about the whole problem because I figure there is no competition-I am what I am, and either I am needed as that or I'm not suitable anyway.

    But feeling secure doesn't make me immune to reverence for certain great names in the business. When I was making The Swarm, my character had to deliver a lecture on survival to an assembled group at a missile base near Houston, Texas. I was in mid-speech when I suddenly became aware of the audience listening to me: Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, Richard Widmark. I dried stone dead. These weren't actors; they were legends. I rarely dry up, but being in the presence of all that film history, that was too much for me.
    As I look to my future in this industry, eventually I would like to direct, but not quite yet. A director starts working on a picture three months before it starts shooting and continues working on it four months after shooting has ended. In the period a director needs to make one film, someone like myself, who acts in pictures a great deal, could have made four. So one reason for my not directing is simple: money.
    And all in all, I think I'll know when to give up acting and start directing because to me it's easy to tell if you're still a star or if you're on the way down. If I'm a star, I get a script and they say, "We know it's about an Australian dwarf, but we'll change it a bit." If I'm on the way down, they'd say I was too short to play in The Michael Caine Story. Maybe then I'll direct.

    1983 Columbia Pictures Industries. Ap rights reserved
    EDUCATING RITA
    Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Columbia, 1983.

    01992 M&M Productions. All Rights Reserved
    BLUE ICE
    Directed by Russell Mulcahy. M&M Productions, 1992
    Pictured with Sean Young

     

MICHAEL CAINE
    FILMOGRAPHY

    THE BLACK WINDMILL
    Directed by Don Siegel. Universal Pictures, 1974
    Pictured with Donald Pleasance

    ON DEADLY GROUND
    Directed by Steven Seagal. Warner Bros., 1994
    Pictured with Steven Seagal

    NOISES OFF
    Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. 'Ihuchstone/Amblin 1991
    Pictured with Carol Burnett and Mlark Linn-Baker

Independent

     

EDITOR'S NOTE
    This book was taken in part from the transcript of Michael Caine's views as he expressed them in his two-day recorded class on acting in film produced for television by Dramatis Personae Ltd. in conjunction with the BBC. Acting in Film, the video, is one of a series of master classes showing practical acting techniques. Each episode relates to a particular medium (e.g. opera or film) or a particular type of drama (e.g. Restoration Comedy or farce). Each class is led by a recognized master of the genre. Scripted scenes are discussed and rehearsed by the master