Sunday, Dec. 26, 1999 | 10:39 a.m.
For more than 40 years and through an astonishing 80 films now, Michael Caine has specialized in rowdy characters, sleek and seedy alike. In "The Cider House Rules," he takes on a new challenge: playing a soft-spoken man.
"For me, the noisier ones are far easier," Caine merrily allows.
The new film, a coming-of-age story with a subtle but firm subversive streak, casts Caine as a New England doctor of the '30s, a man who goes about his work with the calm that comes of deep conviction. It's the first American character Caine, 66, has ever played, as well as the most hushed character he has ever played.
In a rangy, candid interview in New York, the humbly-born English actor, who has made a fortune and a great name in movies, says that this new role was a challenge on several fronts.
First there's the guy's muted approach to the business of life. Muted, Caine declares, is not his personal style.
"For me, this character is about as far away from who I am as you can get. I have my quiet moments and I have my sensitive moments, but this is such a quiet man.
"You have to have a lot of confidence to play this kind of character. You constantly worry if he's going to be interesting.
"But I found that if you have the confidence to just play him as a human being, you do get the tears; you do get the laughter. I have to say, though, that I'm glad I was old enough when I got the role to have the experience to play it that way.
Going into "The Cider House Rules," the American accent was more than a bit daunting for Caine, too.
Many fans who have seen him in any number of American movies -- including an Oscar-winning turn in Woody Allen's 1986 "Hannah and Her Sisters" -- just assume that somewhere along the line, Michael Caine has spoken American in movies.
Wrong. This is the first time.
To prepare, Caine worked extensively with a dialogue coach before filming began (and kept the coach close by during filming, too).
"I worked with him for two weeks before I even accepted the script, Caine recalls.
"When we were done, I asked him to give me a test. I passed. So I accepted the part.
"This is what I told him: 'I don't want to be an actor doing a great American accent. I want to be an American doing nothing.'
"That's the whole trick of acting: To make it look easy. That's difficult. But if it looks difficult, you're not doing it right."
Famously, Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in South London to a father who made his living as a fish market porter and a mum who worked as a charwoman. He showed an early interest in theater, took a job as an assistant stage manager, then worked his way as an actor through England's legendary repertory system.
His breakthrough movie, "Zulu," came in 1964, with the role of an aristocratic lieutenant. He remembers it still, and his eyes smile at the irony: The Cockney chap has a go at the upper-class twit.
"I certainly started in movies with a very plummy character," Caine says of that long-ago role. "Straight English is very easy for me.
"I could have gone to RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts). I could have sounded like every other British actor of that time. But I didn't want to do that.
"I never cleaned up my accent. I was one of the first of my people -- working-class people -- to go into the theater in England. It just wasn't done back when I started.
"But I wanted to keep my accent. I wanted to let the working class know that I am one of them and that if I could do it, they can do it."
Caine laughs and speaks of an unexpected result of his decision to sound like the man-on-the-street in his immensely class-conscious, therefore accent-conscious homeland (think "My Fair Lady's" Eliza).
"What has happened is that I've become one of the most impersonated voices around," he says.
"Every impressionist does me. Every guy in a barbershop does me.
"In a business like this, you are an individual. I never thought of it back when I was starting, but you listen to a Humphrey Bogart, a James Cagney -- they had individual voices. And I do, too."
Unlike many other veterans, Caine says he has no overwhelming desire to take the reins of a movie, to direct. Yet it is an idea that has skittered across his mind.
"The only way I would do it is the way I thought of doing it in my early youth, when I was 10 years old," he says of directing.
"Back then, I always thought that the director wrote the film. Now, in my older age, I guess I'm going into my second childhood. I'm writing a novel. If it's a success, I'd write a screenplay.
Caine laughs introspectively, as if surprised himself by what has most lately come to pass in his working life.
"It's not beyond the realm of possibility," he muses. "So much of my life (story) is dreams that come true.
"I suppose you have to have these little pipe dreams that keep you going, although I suppose that writing, producing and directing a feature film is not a little pipe dream.
"From my perspective, though, it doesn't seem that big."
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