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The 76-year-old actor stars as a retired magician, Clarence, who befriends a
young boy whose parents run a retirement home in new British film Is Anybody
There?.
Caine revealed: "I've just finished a film called Harry Brown and between that
and this I didn't work for 18 months so you get the impression because this has
come out and then I'm talking about Harry Brown, you think: 'Boy, he's making
films the whole time'. I didn't make a film for 18 months because quite
truthfully I didn't see a script that I wanted to do for 18 moths until Harry
Brown came along.
"And now I don't have a script to do. I have a very small part in Christopher
Nolan's Inception, but that's just a friendship between he and I, it's just a
couple of days.
"I'm talking about a proper movie that I'm in - I don't have one. And if one
doesn't come along that I want to do. I will be gone. I will be retired. So
that's how it is with me now."
Is Anybody There? which co-stars David Morrissey, Anne-Marie Duff, Bill Millner
and Leslie Philips sees Caine's character slowly develop dementia.
Caine said: "I obviously brought a lot of experience of what it was to suffer
from dementia because Dougie Hayward was one of my closest friends and he died
while we were making the film.
"I hadn't really thought of it because it's not a film about a guy with
dementia, it's just a film about an old magician and a little boy and in the end
he does die with dementia. And I didn't think about it honestly, until I really
came to it, and then it struck me. I'd been four years, five years with it, not
day in day out like a relation but just waiting to walk in and Dougie to ask me
who I was, and then one day he did. And that's as accurate a portrayal of
dementia I could do from extreme close-up experience."
The star of The Italian Job, Alfie and Zulu has made over 100 films but is most
proud of this latest performance.
He said: "I've read many scripts that have made me laugh, and this one made me
laugh, but I've never read a script before that made me cry, and this one made
me cry and that's why I did it.
"It's the best I've ever done myself. That doesn't mean a lot of other actors
couldn't do it better, but it's the best I could do it and I'm sort of happy
that I could have got there with such a difficult part."
Asked if making the film had raised the question of whether there was life
after death Caine said: "I'd dearly love to think that there is somebody
there.
"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.""