Michael Caine: "Movies retire you"

Michael Caine‘s new film, Is Anybody There?, which opened Friday, has the actor playing a magician named Clarence who finds himself in a retirement home run by the parents of a young boy obsessed with ghosts.

Here he talks about retiring, working with kids and whether or not acting gets any easier.

From Boston.com:

Q. Is an actor a kind of magician?

A. You’re putting on a show. You’re trying to be a success, you’re trying to be a hit.

Q. Is it harder or easier working with a child actor?

A. It was very easy working with Bill because I don’t regard him as a child actor. I regard him as an actor who’s a child. The difference is you feel absolute confidence in him. You don’t feel he’s a child. You can depend on him. He’s quite extraordinary. Of course, he’d never been in the theater. He’d only been in an amateur dramatic society. So he didn’t have any theatrical baggage to get rid of. He’s a natural little boy. . . . He was absolutely essential. If we’d gotten the wrong child, the movie would have gone in the toilet.

Q. Are there enough parts for septuagenarians?

A. Fewer parts. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just quality I’m looking for. It’s so much harder for older actresses [than it is for actors] getting parts. In 18 months, I’ve found two leading parts in scripts that I wanted to do. That’s extremely fortunate for me.

Q. Could you ever imagine retiring?

A. No, and I’ll tell you why. I think the movies retire you. With me, for instance, when I did “Is Anybody There?” I waited a year to do that. It was 18 months before I did another film, “Harry Brown.” If one doesn’t turn up I’ll be retired. If the scripts don’t come, I won’t do another movie. But there won’t be any fanfare or anything grand. And if the scripts are there, I keep working. I just try to find a better part and make myself better all the time. It’s sort of my hobby now. It’s how I choose to spend my time.

Q. For decades, you were the hardest-working star in Hollywood. You kept turning out the movies. So has that changed?

A. Oh yeah, that’s long gone. I’m the laziest one in Hollywood now.

Q. Is it liberating not to have to play a standard leading man role?

A. Oh, sure, it’s absolutely fine. You don’t have to worry how you look. In fact, the worse you look the better. You don’t get made up in the morning, you get made down. You come in and look like rubbish, and they say you don’t look bad enough.

Q. Does acting get easier with age or harder?

A. With my sort of cantankerousing, it gets easier to do. It gets easy to do what you’re doing. Then I go and ball it up by making it difficult for myself. I try to play parts that are entirely different from me and entirely different from the ones I did before. Having played this mad old magician in “Is Anybody There?” in my next one I play a tough old marine.

Christian Bale opens up about the "rant"

Christian Bale is coming clean (sort of) about his on-set vilification of Terminator: Salvation‘s sound guy last year.

From Total Film:

“Hey listen, I did it, it’s in the public space. I take the consequences for it. I’m not hiding from that. I went overboard,” he told Total Film.

“I’m not making any excuses, but there is an essential trust and it’s not a tacit one, which is every sound guy says, ‘We are not only not recording, we are not even listening.’ So, well, there goes that.”

“I do stress though, it’s not in anyway a trust that’s there to cover up bad behaviour. It’s not about that. It’s an essential trust that’s needed for creativity.”

Bale said he didn’t think film fans benefited from hearing what went on behind-the-scenes.

“I just don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to know that much either. I’m actually someone that’s very anti the whole B-Rolls, DVD extras and stuff like that.

“I understand people are interested, I get that they want to hear about it, but to me I look at it as old school movie magic and with magic you do not reveal your secrets.

“I’m not making any excuses. I’m not whining. I’m not going [puts on silly voice] ‘Oh well, if it hadn’t have been for that!’ But it’s that. It’s a creative trust. It’s not a behavioural trust.”

I agree with himabout the trust factor. If you can’t trust the people around you, you’re not going to do your best work.

The DVD extras? Not so much. I’ve actually had Netflix send me DVD’s just because of the extras. Course, I’m a film geek.

Send Your Stuff! "Look Both Ways"

Look Both Ways is a SAG ultra-low budget film that starts shooting at the end of June.

Lots of roles in this!

DREAM BIG CASTING
1258 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE
SUITE 305
LOS ANGELES, CA
90038
ATTN: LOOK BOTH WAYS

Send Your Stuff! "Weeds"

Showtime’s Weeds just started filming it’s 5th season. This is a great time to send them your headshot!

DAVA WAITE PEASLEE CASTING
RENMAR STUDIOS
846 N. CAHUENGA BLVD
BUILDING B
LA, CA 90038

Send Your Stuff! "Look"

Look is a 1/2 series based on the feature of the same name (directed by Adam Rifkin)

Lots of roles in this!

CAPTURED FILMS INC.
ATTN: RACHEL TENNER
9615 BRIGHTON WAY
M1 10
BEVERLY HILLS, CA 90210

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