Michael Caine reveals his three rules for accepting a role: “I took a lot of bad scripts”
With over 150 credits to his name, Michael Caine could hardly be accused of being workshy during a legendary career that lasted more than 70 years until he decided to gracefully retire from acting at the age of 90.
However, being so prolific for such an extended period of time meant that his filmography was loaded up with more than a few failures, flops, misfires, and affronts to the good name of cinema, something the two-time Academy Award winner was more than happy to admit.
As an affable chap, Caine always tried to find the positives, even when lending his name to some wretched films. Jaws: The Revenge is perhaps the most famous example, with the star missing out on collecting his first Oscar in person, but at least he was well-compensated for his efforts.
Shivering in Russia while shooting a pair of made-for-TV sequels to one of his greatest movies was a wake-up call, as was playing the villain in a shitty Steven Seagal flick. It was in the mid-1990s when Caine reached his lowest professional ebb, and he promised himself that he’d never sign another contract unless his demands were met.
He’d already established that his self-proclaimed cardinal rule of bad movies was to ensure that even if the end result was going to be terrible, he could at least make sure he was stinking up the joint somewhere glamorous. Eventually, that process was refined, with Caine confessing to Roger Ebert that “I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors.”
To safeguard himself from having it happen again, three golden rules were carved into stone, or at least the star’s memory. The first two were relatively simple and straightforward, but the third was tied directly to some particularly delicious pastries he’d sampled once upon a time at an industry legend’s birthday celebrations.
Rule number one? “Good director, even if unknown.” So far, so obvious. Rule number two? “Good screenplay.” Again, self-explanatory, with a performer as vastly experienced as Caine more than capable of separating good writing from hackneyed prose. The third? Direct in a sense, but highly specific.
“Good location, and can bring my family,” he explained. “If I open a script and the hero is trekking through darkest Africa, I close the script. Budapest is a nice location: I have my hotel, and I’m bringing my family over, and I enjoy the apple strudel. I remember the strudel from Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday party here, seven – or was it eight? – years ago. I was bombed the whole time, and I don’t remember much else, but I remember the strudel.”
To put things into perspective, Caine espoused these virtues while in Hungary, working with his idol. He believed he was terrible in John Huston’s Escape to Victory, but thanks to his trio of rules and his fondness for the local strudel, an enjoyable time was had.
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