'Since I reportedly retired, I've made 12 films and won an Oscar'
Micky Caine and Kenny Branagh have been bigging up Sleuth, so Ricky Gosh Dastidar met them for a chinwag...
How faithful have you remained to the original concept of the film?
Branagh: We wanted to preserve the central idea of the film which is that of two guys in a room fighting over a woman that we don’t actually see. This time, we are trying to look at it from a different angle.
Caine: I felt that in the original film, the older man was from an upper-middle class background but in this one, I imagined him to come from a working-class family so he wasn’t so much of a snob, but he was a lot tougher. I tried to make him the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to take on in a fight and I also gave him a hint of morbid jealousy, which the previous character didn’t have.
Is it true that after Get Carter, you said only bad movies should be remade?
Caine: Yes, because if you remake a very good movie, you are doing something for nothing. I say this because years ago we remade a bad film that starred Marlon Brando and David Niven and it was called Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The original wasn’t funny at all! I personally would never have re-made Sleuth but in Harold Pinter’s new script, there isn’t a single line from the original and I get to play a different character in this so it was like a double whammy for me.
Do you feel more comfortable as an actor or a director?
Branagh: It’s difficult to choose but I do like to see how people approach acting in different ways. It was a real privilege to be among such a creative team of actors on this film. Harold Pinter himself is an actor and observing the way Michael and Jude would deliver his heightened dialogue was utterly fascinating for me. I didn’t feel like I wanted to act in this particular film, but the project really did get my acting juices flowing.
Caine: Film acting is a double-edged sword — It is extremely difficult to make it look easy.
In what stage of his career was Laurence Olivier in when you made the original Sleuth with him?
Caine: Olivier had just been fired from the National Theatre and he was taking valium at the time. The director Joseph Mankiewicz found out about this because he was finding it difficult to remember his lines. When he stopped taking valium, he was absolutely fine!
In your long and industrious career, what would you consider to be the high-point so far?
Caine: I always say, you must not compete with your contemporaries or your predecessors. You must only compete with yourself. Since the time that I reportedly retired, which was about 15 years ago, I’ve made 12 movies and won an Oscar! I went from doing Little Voice to The Cider House Rules, followed by The Quiet American right through to Sleuth, and I consider each one to be better than the last. So the best performance I’ve given is this one because it’s the latest.
You have played a huge variety of characters over the years. How do you choose your roles?
Caine: I’m in a situation now where I only do movies that I simply cannot afford to turn down. Sleuth by Harold Pinter, Batman Begins and a new film by John Crowley called Is There Anybody There were all offers I couldn’t possibly refuse.
Could you tell us about the new Batman film, The Dark Knight?
Caine: The question we all asked ourselves with the new Batman film was how can anyone possibly top Jack Nicholson’s performance as The Joker? I am happy to report that Heath Ledger’s performance, at the very least, equals Jack Nicholson’s performance. When you see it, you will be truly amazed by what he has done. I’m one of Christopher Nolan’s biggest fans and I thought Batman Begins was the best one ever made and Christian Bale is the best actor to have played Batman. It’s a shame I only play the butler, because the most I can do is make you a cup of tea!
Jude Law was one of the producers on this film. Did you ever think about producing when you were his age?
Caine: When I was in my 30s, it was the 1960s and we didn’t think much about anything except how late can we stay out and can we still get away with it! I remember working in France and there was a famous discotheque there. One night I was there with Peter O’Toole and we went straight to work on different film-sets after finishing at 6 o’ clock in the morning! I can’t do that anymore ...
I was very good friends with Henry Fonda, who was the star of that era and he told me you are so lucky because you get to choose what you do. They were paid by the studios and were contracted to do exactly as they were told but I was different because no-one ever told me what to do. And they still don’t.