Video:Michael Caine Interview - ShoWest Lifetime Achievement Award

Transcript:Michael Caine Interview - ShoWest Lifetime Achievement Award

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at 2009 ShoWest.

Michael Caine – Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

What do you prefer, big studio movies or smaller independent films?

Michael Caine: "I like change. I'll bring two recent movies up that I've done: Is Anybody There? - which I'm here to promote - and The Dark Knight. Now, if ever two films could be as different from each other, it's those two. One's a very, very small British movie, very intense acting. No budget – no big action stuff. And then there is The Dark Knight which is sort of millions of dollars and great, big scenes, and they're both exciting for different reasons. But with something like The Dark Knight, you have a picture which has the intensity of performance and the caliber of actor that you would get in a small picture where you're just using actors. So it was a sort of triple whammy all the way around, but I like doing either. Of course, what I love is the change. You don't want to sit there doing great big spectaculars for years or little tiny intense dramas for years. You change. It's wonderful."

How do you choose your roles and what makes you so successful?

Michael Caine: "What I did is I became a stage actor. For nine years I was a stage actor and I finally became a success and I got into the West End, British version of Broadway. I'd been in there one night and the producer came up to me and said, 'I want you to do a movie called Zulu.' And I went into Zulu and life just carried me along from there. I love working in movies. I adore movies. I've always been a great movie fan. If I wasn't a movie actor, I'd still be going to see movies. And so my life just turned out as it did. But I think the thing that influenced my movie career is that I was a repertory actor for years which meant I did a play a week. So over the course of the year I would play anything from the butler to the lord of the manor, or the criminal to the head of the police. That's what I've done in movies. I've treated it as a place where I can change all the time. And the thing about me is that I've always tried to change from picture to picture. If I made a successful picture, I've made Alfie and then they'd get me a load of scripts about guys going around seducing women, I didn't do that, you know? And so I've done things that interest me."

Do you have any plans to retire?

Michael Caine: "No, I don't have a sense of retirement because I think movies retire you – sometimes after your first movie if you're not very lucky. And I'm getting a Lifetime Achievement Award this evening, and this is about the fifth. I'm beginning to get a hint that I should stop doing it. I've got a situation where I've got to stop accepting Lifetime Achievement awards or retire, and I'm not going to retire. I'll keep going. But I think what will happen to me is I sit there and wait for scripts that I really love and Is Anybody There? of course I loved. I made it a year ago and then I waited for a year for another script which is called Harry Brown which I've just finished. And what happens now is I don't have another script to do so if no script comes along that I want to do – and I really mean it – I will just disappear. There won't be any fanfare. No 'Michael Caine retires' or all that. Like General MacArthur said, 'Old soldiers just fade away,' I will fade away."

Do you know anything about the possibility of another Batman movie?

Michael Caine: "Absolutely nothing. All I know is that Christopher Nolan who writes and directs the Batmans is doing a picture called Inception, you know? And I'm not in it and I don't think it's a Batman film. And so I think another Batman film is a long, long way off, a long, way. I would say three years. Three years, yeah, it must be."

Also of Interest:

The Dark Knight Photos, Review, Interviews, and Trailers

Sleuth Directed by Kenneth Branagh and Starring Jude Law and Michael Caine