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Is Anybody There? - an interview with Sir Michael Caine
With some 76 years under his belt, there's still no slowing Sir Michael Caine. Indeed, his role as grumpy widowed conjuror Clarence in charming British comedy Is Anybody There? might just be his best performance for years. Neil Davey finds out more
Is Anybody There? is a gentle tale of life, death and a friendship that spans the generations. It could so easily have been twee but, with young Bill Milner (who was so good in Son of Rambow) representing enquiring youth and Sir Michael Caine representing, well, cantankerous old sods, the film turns out to be genuinely funny and moving.
"I've read many scripts that have made me laugh," reveals Sir Michael, "and this one made me laugh, but I've never read a script before that made me cry, and this one made me cry."
He's also full of praise for his young co-star. "I could absolutely trust him to be there, as though I was acting with an adult," explains Caine. "I was taught 'rehearsal is the work, performance is the relaxation' and that's what I look for in very good film actors. They've already done the work before they've got there and that's what I got with the entire cast of this picture."
Such preparation might be surprising from a 13-year old co-star but less surprising when you consider the rest of the cast: other residents of the home are played by British acting legends such as Rosemary Harris, Sylvia Syms, Leslie Phillips, Peter Vaughan and Thelma Barlow. Remarkably Caine hadn't worked with them before.
"There were all these old actors who'd made millions of films and such was my experience in my early acting days I had never been in any of them," he explains.
The film also features Elizabeth Spriggs in her last role. Caine smiles fondly as he recalls a conversation they had on set. "She spent a few minutes one afternoon congratulating me on my performance in a film I wasn't in," he reveals. "But I never let on and thanked her very much.
"It was Lawrence of Arabia," he adds. "She thought I was Peter O'Toole."
If it's not too indelicate a question – "which means it's going to be then," interjects Caine – does making a film like this make you question your own mortality?
Caine shakes his head. "No. When I do a role like this, I don't think of my mortality. I think of yours." He grins. "I feel sympathy for all you people who are going to die and I want to show you how it's done."
The film covers some very serious topics, not least dementia, a problem that Caine's character develops. Caine's portrayal is accurate and inspired by sad personal events.
"I brought a lot of experience of how it was to suffer from dementia as Dougie Hayward, one of my closest friends, died while we were making it. I'd been four years, five years with it, not day in day out like a relation, but waiting for to walk in and for Dougie to ask who I was. And one day he did.
"Everybody's getting older and older," adds Sir Michael. "We have a great deal of dementia (now) because nobody used to grow old enough to get it. Someone said to me we're eventually going to live to 110 and I said 'who's going to keep me? And what age do I retire? 100?' How are you going to live all those years and who's going to keep you doing it?"
Caine smiles. "I've got a couple of grandsons now so I'm banking on them."
Young Milner's character is obsessed with the afterlife, particularly the point where the "soul" leaves the body. It raises an obvious final question: is there anybody there?
"I'd dearly love to think that there is somebody there," says Sir Michael. "And I've got a lot of back-up because my father was a Catholic, my mother was a Protestant, I was educated by Jews and I'm married to a Muslim. So I won't lose out on a technicality."
