Photo By Jamie Painter Young

While there's plenty of drama onscreen in the new film Secondhand Lions, there was no tension to be found during a recent conversation with its co-stars Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, and Haley Joel Osment. In a profession in which egos can often overshadow everything, these three Oscar-nominated actors (two of them winners) checked their egos at the door when they made this film and likewise when they sat down to speak with Back Stage West about their craft.

Comedic levity, on the other hand, translates easily from the screen to reality, as was evident during this visit with the trio. It's clear that they relish one another's company, which is arguably the secret to the success of Secondhand Lions, a refreshingly sweet, PG-rated tale by writer/director Tim McCanlies about a 14-year-old boy sent by his errant mother (Kyra Sedgwick) to spend a life-altering summer with his two great uncles--reclusive brothers who have long been estranged from the family.

Michael Caine: In London, there's a paper called The Stage. That's where I got my first job. I came out of the army, and I was working in a meat market with this old guy, and he said, "What do you want to be?" I said, "I want to be an actor." So he said, "What are you going to do then?" I said, "I don't know." In the area [I grew up in] we didn't know about drama schools--nothing. He said, "My daughter is a semi-professional singer, and she gets her jobs out of The Stage, and they advertise for actors in it. You could answer one of them." And he brought it in the next Friday--it comes out on a Friday--and I looked through it, and it said, "Stage manager to play small parts." I answered it and I got the job, and that's how I got into show business.

Robert Duvall: What was your first part?

Caine: I came on as a policeman and said, "Come along with me, sir." I forgot the line. I was so nervous I forgot it. It's true. It was one of those Agatha Christie plays, where everyone's gathered and they don't know who the murderer is, and in the end the old duke comes out, and they're all standing there. They're all suspects in these murders, and the police come, and the old duke says, "Arrest most of these people!"

In my next part, I played the villain. I had to get this girl drunk and seduce her onstage, and I was so nervous that I forgot to take the cork out of the bottle. So she was drinking empty glasses and getting pissed and getting seduced from absolutely no alcohol.

Back Stage West: Haley, I know your dad, Eugene, is an actor, which I imagine influenced your choice to become one, but I'm curious--how did you get started so young? Is it true that a casting director discovered you in public and tapped you for your first job on a commercial?

Haley Joel Osment: My parents and I had already been planning on me perhaps doing a couple of commercials at that time. It was just a coincidence that led to my first commercial. When I was 3, I'd be in the backyard, running around with some homemade cape that my mom made me, and I'd pretend that my dog was a monster. My parents observed this and said, "Hmmm. He might enjoy acting," since my dad had been an actor. At about the same time, I had been walking through a department store, and we saw a casting booth, and that ended up leading to a Pizza Hut commercial. I was 4. That ended up being a one-line thing [shot] in Griffith Park. I said, "Big would be an understatement," and that was my first line.

BSW: From what I've read, Robert, your parents encouraged you to get into acting. That surprises me, as you come from a military family.

Duvall: Yes, they pushed me into it.

Caine: They wanted you to be an actor?

Duvall: Yeah. Well, they figured it was that or nothing, do or die. I wasn't doing very well.

Caine: I told my father I wanted to be an actor, and he thought I was gay. He washed his hands of me. I saw his face. It dropped a mile.

BSW: Robert and Michael, you worked together on the 1976 film The Eagle Has Landed. Do either of you think you've improved with age?

Duvall: Well, you know, you get better with age. The older the violin, the sweeter the music.

Caine: We've gotten nicer with age. We're like Bordeaux wine--more mellow.

BSW: Michael, when you accepted the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for your performance in The Cider House Rules three years ago, you paid your respects onstage to your youngest fellow nominee, Haley.

Caine: I thought I better acknowledge him in case we ever worked together again.

BSW: Did Haley measure up to your expectations?

Caine: Oh, he's gone way beyond that, because he was a child actor then. He's an actor now. We don't have to treat him with any deference. We have no mercy on him. We treat him like a fellow actor.

Osment: That's right. [Laughs.]

Duvall: Listen to him. His voice was changing then, and it's changing even deeper now.

Osment: I know. I was lucky with the timing of this film because, right at that time, I was at the most extreme voice change, which worked for this character. There were pitches that I honestly could not hit. It was this really off-balance feeling that aided the character, and it happened truly by coincidence.

BSW: Haley, most young actors would feel some intimidation going head to head with two veteran Oscar winners. Were you at all nervous about working with these guys?

Caine: We're not intimidating.

Duvall: Nah. He wasn't even intimidated by the lion. He was the only one of us walking around with a lion [on the set].

Osment: People see intimidation as a negative word, where there's fear and apprehension going into it. That's different from the positive nervous energy that I get--the excitement of walking around the stage with these guys. That was definitely present. It was very exciting going to the set every day. Every scene was an adventure because of that. I never was intimidated or made nervous because of any negative energy. It was all about this positive thrill of being on the stage with these guys, and that also channeled into [my character] Walter a little bit. A lot of the awe that you see in the beginning of the film comes from a natural thrill that was present.

BSW: Robert, when I interviewed you six years ago to talk about The Apostle you said you often learn from the young actors you work with. What did you learn from Haley?

Duvall: He jumps in. Just jump in and do it. Young actors are good these days. Overall, there were always good actors and bad actors, but I think the standards are higher now worldwide.

BSW: Robert and Michael, do you either of you feel like you've raised the bar for the young generations of actors?

Caine: No. They lift the bar up themselves. Being an actor is not like going to university and you get an exam and you get a certain amount of marks and you get in. It's open to everybody to do anything, anytime. You don't know who's going to be it, and you don't know where it's going to strike--failure or success. And that's what's great about it. Otherwise it wouldn't be called show business; it would just be called business.

Duvall [to Caine]: You have a good voice.

Caine: [Laughs.] My voice resonates, believe me. My wife spends the entire time in restaurants going [in a whisper], "Shut up!"

BSW: Robert, how well do you think Michael did on his Texas accent in Secondhand Lions?

Duvall: He did good. He had a good coach with him every day.

Caine: I had done a New England accent in The Cider House Rules. And I had done a Southern accent in a picture years ago called Hurry Sundown, with Jane Fonda, but they never gave me a coach on that. I just had to invent it myself, and the only advice I got was from Vivian Leigh. I saw Vivian Leigh in a restaurant, and I said, "Look, you did this great accent in Gone with the Wind. How'd you do it, the Southern accent?" She said, "All day long you say, 'Four Door Ford.' "

BSW: Did it work for you?

Caine: No. It was terrible. I didn't have the line "Four Door Ford" in the picture. It never came up. But with [Secondhand Lions] I worked with a dialect coach from Texas, and he was really great. He said to me, "You've got the accent wrong. You're speaking a Texas accent with an English rhythm, which is each word standing on its own. He said [Caine suddenly speaks with a convincing Texan accent], "In Texan, each word leans on the other one."

The best thing I ever said to a dialect coach was, "I don't want to be a British actor doing the best American accent you ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing." Doing an accent for a picture is nothing. It's just talking. That's the start. You haven't started the performance yet.

Osment: I did a Polish accent for a World War II film [I'll Remember April] I did in Poland four years ago, and I found that you can't be thinking about the accent while you're doing it. I started working on it with a speech coach in L.A. several months before we started shooting. He gave me some tapes so I could listen to Polish accents, and I listened to it a lot before we went to Poland. And then all of a sudden it got a lot easier when we went to this little town east of Krakow and there were four Americans on the entire project. Everyone else was Polish-speaking and pretty much spoke no English on the set. Then you could just hear it all the time in your head, and when it was time to do the lines in the film, the rhythm and the words all came naturally.

Caine: Again, with me in Texas, all the technicians were Texans. I just heard Texan all day long.

BSW: What's a piece of advice you can offer actors?

Caine: Most actors don't listen. They're thinking about their next line. They're not listening to what you're saying. And don't do a stunt on the last day of the film, because they don't give a shit if you get hurt.

Osment: My advice is related to Michael's, and it's something I've especially noticed in the past couple of years. When I was a young kid, we'd concentrate on making sure I got the lines right and on my performance as a little kid. Having growing up, [I've learned that] the energy and the reality is raised when you pay attention to everyone else in the scene--as Michael said, when you listen to people. Especially in this film, what was so important with three characters who have such strong personalities and the characters are so defined [is that] you have to play off of what everyone else says, and when you get the best moments is when it's just the characters [interacting].

Caine: I remember a piece of advice given to me by a director. I was in a play, and I was doing a scene where I had no lines, and I sat down on the edge of the set and wouldn't say anything, and I sat there for about five minutes, and the director said to me, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm sitting here." He said, "I know you're sitting. I can see it. What are you doing?" I said, "I'm not doing anything." He said, "Why not?" I said, "Well, I haven't got anything to say." He said, "What do you mean you haven't got anything to say? You've got wonderful things to say, but you decide not to say them. That's what I want to see you doing there--not sitting there with a blank face saying, 'I haven't got any dialogue.'" That's what acting is about.

Duvall: One famous actor--I think it was Spencer Tracy--said, "I talk. You listen. You listen. I talk," sort of like we're doing now. It should be simple. Then if you're talented and relaxed and you have to be emotional, that will happen anyway. But if you start from doing nothing, just playing the facts, that's good, rather than trying to set preconceptions in there.

Also [Sanford Meisner] said, "There's no right or wrong. There's only truthful or untruthful." I mean, you can question a characterization, but if it's truthful, then that's the beginning and the end--to be truthful.

Caine: For instance, I was sitting at a table rehearsing a scene with an actor, and an assistant came up and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll come back later. I don't want to interrupt." He would have interrupted the rehearsal, but he thought we were having a very intimate conversation, and he was too embarrassed to interrupt. I said to the other actor, "We've got this right. He thought we were talking to each other. He couldn't see the acting."

Also I have some advice for someone who's new to movies or doing a first movie. Actors will say, "I've only got two lines," and you want to say to them, "Do learn those thoroughly, because you're going to forget the second one." When it goes quiet and they say action, you better know those lines backwards, inside out, upside down, every way. I'll always remember the guy who had one line and he blew the line. The director said to him, "You didn't learn your line." He said, "I knew it on the bus." Because the nervous strain of just one line and the camera's on you and the whole thing has gone quiet--

Duvall: But don't you think if it's a good director, he'll really accommodate the actor and minimize those nerves?

Caine: Oh yeah. Great directors do it all the time.

BSW: What do you enjoy most about acting?

Caine: Going home. [Everyone laughs.] Getting it right.

Duvall: It's a nice life between "action" and "cut" when it goes well. Sometimes, though, simple things keep messing you up.

Osment: Finishing a really difficult scene, and you know you've got it down, and you're exhausted because you put everything into it. That's the best feeling.

Caine: Yeah, that is great.

Osment: I think another one of the biggest fears you can get is once you finish that exhausting scene and they're checking the gate [of the camera]. That's the biggest apprehension you can get--that they're going to find something in the gate.

Caine: And it's always in the big scene.

BSW: On the subject of elements being out of the actor's control, what do you think actors can control in their profession?

Caine: You can only be in control of being worthy when [opportunity] does come. Learn your lines.

Osment: If you're ready and you have your character down, you can react to anything. In this film, we had a little bit of that, too--where you have unknown factors. I actually liked it best when things went unexpected, because it makes you feel good to be so confident with your character that if a pig jumps into your lap or there are worms in the corn you're supposed to eat in the scene, it doesn't bother you because you're in the moment. That's when you get the most genuine, spontaneous performance. That's having confidence that when you are taken out of your element and you don't have control of the scene it still works.

BSW: Robert, last time we spoke you told me that it's important for people to have heroes. This question is for all of you: Who are your heroes?

Caine: Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, and my dad.

Duvall: Brando hated Bogart, but that's OK.

Caine: That says a great deal for Bogart and very little for Brando.

Duvall: No, no, no. The other way around. [Laughs.] I liked Brando coming up. Spencer Tracy was very good. Also, when I was a young actor, I really liked Kim Stanley. I'd watch her on Broadway. She was very mannered in a way and neurotic, but she had a great depth. Then later she grew into a caricature of herself, but at one time she was pretty interesting. What about you, Haley?

Osment: My dad, FDR, and every actor I've had the chance to be on the same stage with. I honestly can say I have not had a negative experience with any performer.

Be sure to read the excellent original article.

**Many thanks to FAIR for this article.