Acting in Film
Page 9
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 with a small group of actors. An invited audience observes the evolution of the work and has the opportunity to ask questions. Videos of the Acting Series Programs are available and are intended to be consulted either separately or together with the books.
Thanks must first go to Michael Caine, the master of Acting in Film and the class he led. The class included the talented British actors Simon Cutter, Celia Imrie, Mark Jefferies, Ian Redford, and Shirin Taylor. The producers for Dramatis Personae were myself and Nathan Silver, my partner. Our BBC co-producer and the program's director, providing every skill we lacked, was David G. Croft. Special thanks to National Film Archive London, Theo Cowan, and Jerry Pam. Glenn Young of Applause Theatre Books, our publisher, had the vision to see that the series ought to be done in individual books/videos and gave invaluable editing advice.
Maria Aitken
01991 Touchstone/ Amblin
NOISES OFF
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Touchstone/Amblin 1991
Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in South London on March 14. His father was a Billingsgate Fish Market Porter, and his mother a charwoman. They were poor, living in a gas-lit, two-room flat until the Blitz forced his evacuation with his younger brother, Stanley, to the safety of a farm in Norfolk. After the war, when he was 12, the family moved into a `prefab' in London's East End.
He refused to accept his family's expectation that he become a fish porter. Leaving school at 16, he worked in numerous menial jobs until National Service with the Royal Fusiliers took him to Korea. On his discharge, he spent his days in manual work but used his evenings to study acting. His first job in the theatre was as assistant stage manager in Horsham, Sussex and he was soon able to move to the Lowestoft Repertory Theatre in Suffolk as juvenile lead. Here, he married the leading lady, Patricia Haines, but parted after 2 years. Patricia Haines has since died. They had a daughter, Dominique (known as Niki), now married, with whom he enjoys a close relationship.
Self-confidence and a name change to Michael Caine (his nickname plus one word from The Caine Mutiny which caught his eye on a cinema marquee) encouraged him to move to London where he acted with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. He played a minor role in the film A Hill In Korea and obtained bit parts in other movies and walk-on roles in a couple of West End plays.
MONA LISA
Directed by Neil Jordan. Island Pictures, 1986
Pictured with Cathy Tyson
01986 Island Pictures, All Rights Reserved
Touring Britain with one repertory company after another, he developed a relaxed stage presence and perfected a vast range of accents. In the next five years, he played more than 100 television dramas and became a familiar but nameless face to millions. They were threadbare years shared with flatmates Terence Stamp and composer John Barry.
He went on to understudy Peter O'Toole in the role of Private Bamforth in the London stage hit, The Long, The Short And The Tall, and when O'Toole dropped out, Caine took over the part and toured the Provinces for six months. Following this, his television and film parts grew more substantial.
The turning point in his film career came at the age of 30 in 1963 when he was given the role of effete, aristocratic Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in the Joseph E. Levine Production Zulu. The part was written as a complete ass, but he played it straight down the line as a man who was weak but at least thought he was strong. He turned this supporting role into a starring one and, in the opinion of the critics, stole the show.
Passing forever out of the ranks of anonymity, he next played Marry Palmer, hip but plodding anti-hero of the espionage thriller, The Ipcress File which exceeded all expectations at the box office. His low-key acting style was again lauded by the critics.
Alfie in 1966 catapulted him to super-stardom playing a womanizing Cockney wastrel with innocence and impudent humor. In the annual British film critics' poll, it was voted Best Picture of the Year. Alfie also gave him his first Academy Award nomination and the New York Critic's Prize for Best Actor. In the late sixties he completed Gambit with Shirley Maclaine; Funeral In Berlin; Billion Dollar Brain; Hur7y Sundown directed by Otto Promingot; Woman Times Seven for Vittoria De Sica; Deadfall; The Italian job and The Battle of Britain. He took a starring role in Robert Aldrich's Too Late The Hero and immediately went into The Last Valley for James Clavell.
During the seventies he starred with Elizabeth Taylor in X,Yand Zee; with Mickey Rooney and Lizabeth Scott in Pulp; Laurence Olivier in Sleuth, for which he was awarded his second Academy nomination; Sidney Poitier in The Wilby Conspiracy; Glenda Jackson in The Romantic Englishwoman; Sean Connerv in The Alan Who Would Be King; James Caan and Elliott Gould in Hai 7y & Walter Go 'To New York; Maggie Smith in California Suite, and with Henry Fends, Olivia de Havilland and Richard Widmark in The Swarm.
He made 21 films in the eighties including Dressed to Kill (directed by Brian de Palma); Victory (John Huston); The Hand (Oliver Stone); Death Trap (Sidney Lumet); Educating Rita (Lewis Gilbert), for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and received his third Academy Award nomination; Blame It On Rio (Stanley Donen); The Holcroft Covenant (John Frankenheimer); Hannah And Her Sisters (Woody Allen) winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor; Sweet Liberty (Alan Alda), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Frank Oz) for which he was awarded a Golden Globe for Best Actor In a Comedy.
He returned to television for the first time in over 20 years in 1986 to star in the four hour mini-series Jack The Ripper, which in Britain received the highest ratings ever for a drama.
With his partner -leading American producer, Martin Bregman -in 1992 he formed a film production company, M & M Productions to make films in Britain to be directed by or starring Michael Caine. Their first produc tion is Blue Ice, co-starring Sean Young and directed by Russell Mulcahy.
A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM
Directed by Jan Egleson. Corsair Pictures, 1990
Pictured with John McMartin
In the 1992 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was awarded the CBE.
His autobiography, What's it All About?, was published by Turtle Bay Books in November 1992.
His most recent films are the motion picture Blood and Wine with Jack Nicholson (Feb. 1997), and the television movie Mandela and DeKlerk with Sidney Poitier. A restaurateur, Michael Caine is co-owner of Langan's Brasserie, Langan's Bistro and Odin's in London. The opening of his latest venture in England, The Canteen, in Chelsea Harbour, London took place in November 1992. His first American venture is a tropical Brasserie located in South Beach Miami, Florida.
He is married to Shakira Baksh, a Guyana-born beauty who was a runner-up in The Miss Universe contest. They were married in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 8, 1973 and their home is in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Table of Contents
Introduction ....................... xiii
I Movie Acting: An Overview
2 Preparation
3 At the Studio or On Location
4 In Front of the Camera-Before You Shoot
5 The Take
Close-Ups and Continuity
The Art of Spontaneity
Voice, Sound, Lighting, Movement.
6 Characters
7 Behavior On and Off the Set..........
8 Directors
9 On Being A Star
Filmography of Michael Caine
Editor's Note ...................... 15.5
Biography ........................ 157