Caine and able

Caine,who has given indelible performance after indelible performance in the last four decades in such films as Alfie,The Man Who Would Be King and The Dark Knight,talks about his latest movie,Is There Anybody There? and his receiving the ShoWest’s lifetime achievement award.

“It’s an extraordinary thing to get,” says Caine,trim and fit at 76,of the honour from the movie exhibitors’ convention. “They are tough. There is no sentiment there. I have been to ShoWest before. They are not a namby-pamby crowd.”

But you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody saying an unkind word about Caine as an actor or as a person. “He is the actor of actors,” says Mitch Neuhauser,co-managing director of ShoWest. “The breadth of his work is just enormous,and there’s no genre or type of film that depicts a Michael Caine role.”

“He always makes it look easy and natural,” adds film critic-historian Leonard Maltin. “That is the mark of a true artist. He started out as a young stud leading man but then showed he had skills to back up his charisma.”

Caine,born Maurice Micklewhite,reinvented himself again as he got older. “He didn’t shy away from character parts,” says Maltin. He always found a way to bring colour and life to any role he played. He’s a very skilled craftsman.”

He became a role model for younger movie stars by toggling between mainstream fare and smaller indie projects,such as Is There Anybody There? In the touching drama directed by John Crowley,Caine plays Clarence,a grumpy old magician who arrives unwillingly to live in an old-folks’ home. It doesn’t take long,though,for Clarence to befriend Edward (Bill Milner),the 10-year-old son of the home’s owners. As Clarence disappears further into senility,Edward becomes his caretaker.

“One of my closest friends—he was only 68—just died of Alzheimer’s,” says Caine softly. “I know of where I speak.”

Perhaps it’s that deep connection with dementia that allowed Caine to give such a naked performance: Clarence wears his emotions on his sleeve,including crying over the loss of his past life and getting angry when he can’t remember who he is.

“It was a hell of a part to do,” he says,“I’m now looking for things that are different and stretch me.”
But his wife,Shakira,was a basket case when she saw it. “She got very upset,” says Caine,“because she watched me grow old and die. I said,‘It’s a performance. I am not like him. I am not the same person.’ ”
_Susan King,LATWP