NEW YORK -- The rules are changing for Michael Caine.
For the better part of three decades, Caine was a popular leading man.
Ironically, after his Oscar win in 1986 for Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, Caine career waned.
"I was still getting offered a lot of money, but the scripts all had me playing a sleazy version of my Alfie character," he says, referring to his break-through role in 1966 as a womanizing cad.
"I took a long time off. I wrote my autobiography and set up a string of restaurants.
"I was happy and energized. I didn't want to act. When I decided to come back, no one in Hollywood knew or cared who I was."
Caine's old friend Jack Nicholson offered him a role in Blood and Wine.
"No one saw the movie except producers because they wanted to stay on the good side of Jack. Suddenly, the phone was ringing off the hook again."
But this time, the offers were different.
"No one, least of all me, thinks of Michael Caine as a romantic figure any more.
"That means I don't get the girl, but I get the best roles. It's wonderful. I no longer have the constraints of being a movie star. I'm not expected to carry a movie. I just have to be a strong character actor."
This was the case last year when Caine played an abusive theatrical agent in Little Voice and it's true of his newest role as an abortion doctor in The Cider House Rules.
In John Irving's film version of his best-selling novel, Caine plays the kindly Dr. Wilbur Larch, who runs a clinic that functions both as an abortion hospital and an orphanage. If his frightened or bewildered patients agree to have their babies, but not to raise them, Larch and his staff become the foster parents.
It's the first time in his 43-year career Caine has played an American.
"I've wanted to play an American character for years using an authentic accent. I just didn't know if I could do it. If you botch an American accent, a hundred million people know it instantly."
Caine spent two weeks with a dialect coach who gave him the green light.
Most of Caine's scenes in The Cider House Rules are with the young actors who play the orphans, including Tobey Maguire as the young man Larch wants to follow in his footsteps as head of the clinic.
"Tobey is a remarkable actor," says Caine.
"You cannot see the machinery working. You just see the results. He's a great friend of Leonardo DiCaprio.
"Titanic catapulted Leonardo into fame. Tobey is like the tortoise. He'll get there too, but at a slower, steadier pace."
Caine's own beginnings are humble.
His father was a fish-market porter and his mother a cleaning lady, but it was a stable family.
"I'm an orphan now, but I wasn't as a child. Still, I can understand a little of the feeling of abandonment such children suffer," says Caine.
"During the Blitz of London, children from the cities were sent to live with families in the safer, smaller towns.
"It was a great idea that didn't work because the relocation plan was so disorganized. This other kid named Clarence and
I were sent to live with this horrible woman who was paid good money to look after us," recalls Caine.
"She locked us under the stairs in a little closet for three days. We were terrified. One day, she broke Clarence's foot with a tennis racket.
"She didn't break any of my bones, but she broke my spirit. That experience definitely helped me with The Cider House Rules."
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