Going in Style is a remake of a 1979 caper comedy that originally starred Art Carney, George Burns and Lee Strasberg. In this version, Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin are three lovable retirees whose company pension disappears aft

So, faced with homelessness, they do what anybody would do. They decide to rob a bank. In New York, Sir Michael Caine confessed his passion for the Spanish Culture, his limited with the Spanish and declares that he is not coming from Europe but Brexit.  

Q: Do you think there are many differences in retiring in Europe vs America?

A: First it all let me declare (sadly) that I’m coming from Brexit not Europe. And yes, is not the same but in today’s society we are doing less and less to help the old people 

Q: Are you thinking on retire?

A: The movies retire you, you don’t retire from the movies. You don’t get a script or the script’s crap or the money’s no good. You say; I’d rather stay home and watch TV. I had a period where I thought I’d been retired. I was sent this script by a producer. And I sent it back with a message saying; The part is too small. And he sent it back saying; I didn’t want you to read the lover. I wanted you to read the father. And I was 62, and I was saying; That’s it. I’m over now. To be a movie star, you’ve got to get the girl. So I sort of gave it up for a couple of years. I was in Miami. Opened a restaurant down there, bought an apartment. But Jack Nicholson was my friend down there, and said; Do this movie with me. So I did it (Blood and Wine with Jennifer Lopez), and it wasn’t his best movie. But I so enjoyed it, I went back to work. And the thing I told myself is; You’re not going to get the girl. But you’re going to get the part. And I did and I won an Academy Award (in 2000 for The Cider House Rules). 

Q: What changes with age?

A: You can’t get up at 6 o’clock in the morning. You can’t remember 10 pages of dialogue. And you hate staying awake that long and you want go home early. Touch wood, that hasn’t affected me much. 

Q: Do you speak Spanish?

A: Barely, but I do love Spain and Spanish food. I’m a gardener and I love to visit La Alhambra de Granada and it’s garden.  

Q: Have you ever read a Spanish author?

A: Many, but all translated. Spain has fantastic artist from Cervantes, to Lorca, to Buñuel and Picasso 

Q: Your next movie is also about a robbery

A: Yes. In May I begin to work on a movie based on the Hatton Garden Heist, in which a group of aged lifetime criminals pulled off the biggest jewel robbery in British history. A group of cockney gangsters, all over 63 years old, stole $60 million worth of gold and jewellery. And the oldest one was 73, the guy who planned it. I’m playing him, Brian Reader, the guy who organized it all. 

Q: In your new movie In Going in Style, the crime is also assumed, wrongly, to be the work of young men.

A: That really says something, doesn’t it?” says Caine. “They couldn’t believe it. That’s the point. It was weird to them. And yet, when Kim Kardashian got robbed in Paris, they said the guys who did it were all old guys over 60. So old people are doing it. Their pension is prison. 

Q: DO actors become more confident with experience?

A: oh yes, you get more confident. Obviously. I am doing a movie now ­ and I have played the lead in 85 movies ­ I am much more confident than I was on the first day of Alfie. I was terrified. 

Q: Judy Dench said that she got less confident.

A: Did she? I think you get more confident but you never get confident. You get more confident, but you never go. I’m going to be great in this. You are always nervous about it. If you are not nervous, you are probably in trouble. I sometimes watch these talent shows and people come on and say am the greatest. One of those things with actors are that they go: am I gonna get it right? Am I gonna forget my lines? Am I gonna bubble the line? You are working with an actor, who is as good as you are, and he is the bloody director. So if you bubble a line, he will just go: keep going, I will just shoot it the other way. He will not go: oh screw this, go back to it like a lot of directors do ­ the majority, quite truly. You just keep going. And if you actually forget a line and it is out of continuity, he will just give you the line and you start again.  Just from that line, And so you have such a relaxation because you cannot screw it up, You just keep going.

You work with so many directors who consider themselves stars and probably are great directors and possibly better at directing than you are at acting but on set they forget that they are not supposed to be a star. And then you get the tantrums from the director and that is very unpleasant. 

Q: You said you started acting to get women.

A: That is exactly the same reason that I did. I started at 14. I started at an amateur dramatic society at 14 because all the pretty girls were in it. I was at the basketball team and I remember coming down from the basketball hall and passing by the Amateur Dramatic door which was a swing door and had a window in it and I looked in and saw all the pretty girls in there. I thought: what the hell am I doing on the roof playing basketball? There is all girls down here.  And I was sort of pushing and looking and then they saw me, and the door moved and I got caught in the door. The woman said: come in, we do not have any men. Because all the guys were frightened to join the dramatic society in case they looked sissy I said I¹ll come in¹ and I never do regret it.

 

Maria Estévez

Correspondent Writer

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