Artful codger

It’s a long road from the projects of south London to the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, where Michael Caine is reflecting on his rough-and-tumble roots.

“It’s called the Elephant Castle,” recalls Caine, who still retains the Cockney accent -- and the lack of pretension -- of his childhood home. “It’s very, very rough.”

The memories are fresh in his mind because the two-time Oscar winner (“Hannah and Her Sisters,” “The Cider House Rules”) recently completed a movie, “Harry Brown,” in his old neighborhood. “It was quite amazing,” he says of his return. “There was a mural with me on it and Charlie Chaplin, who is from there as well. It’s Charlie Chaplin in ‘The Kid’ and me with my mum.”

He was shocked, though, at how much nastier the area had become. “An English guy was interviewing me and said, ‘How different is it now?’ I said much tougher. We didn’t have drugs. We had alcohol. We used to get [drunk] and pass out. You didn’t have to knock down an old lady to get the price of a beer. At least they were knocking these places down.”

Caine, who has given indelible performance after indelible performance in the last four decades in such films as “Alfie,” “The Man Who Would Be King” and “The Dark Knight,” is in town from his home in England to talk about his latest movie, “Is There Anybody There?,” which opens April 17, and to receive ShoWest’s lifetime achievement award in Las Vegas on Thursday evening.

“It’s an extraordinary thing to get,” says Caine, trim and fit at 76, of the honor from the movie exhibitors’ convention. “They are tough. There is no sentiment there. I have to been to ShoWest before. They are not a namby-pamby crowd.”

But you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody saying an unkind word about Caine as an actor or as a person.

“He is the actor of actors,” says Mitch Neuhauser, co-managing director of ShoWest. “The breadth of his work is just enormous, and there’s no genre or type of film that depicts a Michael Caine role. What makes this tribute at ShoWest so appropriate and so meaningful is that over the course of his career he has been responsible for providing hours and hours of entertainment for moviegoers worldwide.”

“He always makes it look easy and natural,” adds film critic-historian Leonard Maltin. “That is the mark of a true artist. He started out as a young stud leading man but then showed he had skills to back up his charisma, so he earned respect to go along with his stardom.”

Caine, born Maurice Micklewhite, reinvented himself again as he got older. “He didn’t shy away from character parts,” says Maltin. He always found a way to bring color and life to any role he played. He’s a very skilled craftsman, as he proved in a series of illustrated lectures [on the craft of acting] he did some years ago for the BBC, but he never lets you know the wheels are turning.”

In a way, Caine became a role model for younger movie stars by toggling between mainstream fare and smaller indie projects, such as “Is There Anybody There?” In the touching drama directed by John Crowley (“Boy A”), Caine plays Clarence, a grumpy old magician who arrives unwillingly to live in an old-folks’ home. It doesn’t take long, though, for Clarence to befriend Edward (Bill Milner), the 10-year-old son of the home’s owners. As Clarence disappears further into senility, Edward becomes his caretaker.

“One of my closest friends, he was only 68, just died of Alzheimer’s,” says Caine softly. “I know of where I speak.”

Perhaps it’s that deep connection with dementia that allowed Caine to give such a naked performance -- Clarence wears his emotions on his sleeve, including crying over the loss of his past life and getting angry when he can’t even remember who he is.

“Dougie having dementia was a reason I wanted to do it,” says Caine. “But also from a purely selfish point of view, it was a hell of a part to do. I’m now looking for things that are different and stretch me. I don’t work very much. So a movie sort of has to grab me.

Caine particularly loved the relationship between Clarence and Edward and “how I become responsible for the boy and try to help him and eventually how he became responsible to me.”

Caine developed a deep affection for his young costar, who was previously seen in “Son of Rambow.”

“He is not a trained actor,” says Caine. “So it was easy. We got to know each other very well. People say to me, ‘Did you give him advice?’ I wouldn’t think of giving Billy advice.”

Caine hadn’t talked to many people who had seen the movie until the previous evening when he participated in a Q&A; session in L.A. after a screening. “They seemed impressed with the movie,” he says.

But his wife, Shakira, was a basket case when she saw it.

“She got very upset,” says Caine, “because she watched me grow old and die. I said, ‘It’s a performance. I am not like him. I am not the same person.’ ”

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susan.king@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Michael Caine on . . . Michael Caine

Michael Caine has starred in some of the best-loved modern films. But what does he think of them? We asked him to offer his opinions on some of his most popular characters and movies.

“THE IPCRESS FILE” (1965)

Caine played British counterespionage agent Harry Palmer

“That was terribly important for me because that is the first time I got my name above the title in a movie. I was definitely the star of it. It became very popular [in England] and went to America in the art-house area. What happened was that ‘Alfie’ came to America and then ‘Ipcress’ got a general release in the popular theaters. Everybody in America thinks I made ‘Alfie’ before I made ‘Ipcress.’ ”

“ALFIE” (1966)

Caine became an international sensation as a womanizing young man in swinging London

“It got my entry into the United States as a British actor, and my first Oscar nomination, so it was a double whammy for me. I was Alfie and the picture was called ‘Alfie.’ I was off and running then.”

“GET CARTER” (1971)

Caine played a brutal mobster out to avenge his brother’s death

“That was a picture I liked very much. I really wanted to do that because I felt people didn’t understand criminals and violence. There had become sort of pornography of violence where you would see a man get punched in the face 12 times and he turns up at work the next day with a [bandage] over the eyebrow. It was criticized for being violent, but every piece of violence was just one bang. We wanted to show that just one whack could really do you in. I knew gangsters. It was actually based on a guy I knew. He came up to me after that film and he said, ‘I saw that “Get Carter.” ’ He didn’t know I based it on him. I said, ‘What do you think of it?’ He said, ‘I thought it was a load of crap, it’s so unreal. We are all married with children. That’s why we do what we do. You just run around with beautiful girls over the places. I have got five kids -- we don’t run around with beautiful girls.’ ”

“SLEUTH”

Caine costarred with Laurence Olivier in the 1972 version of the murder mystery, receiving his second lead actor nomination; he played Olivier’s part opposite Jude Law in the 2007 version written by Harold Pinter.

“The first ‘Sleuth’ I thought was great and the second ‘Sleuth’ I thought was great until I read the reviews. I said to Pinter, ‘What film did they show them?’ I have a feeling that [the new] ‘Sleuth’ will be rediscovered some day.”

“THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING” (1975)

Caine starred with Sean Connery in

John Huston’s adaptation of

Rudyard Kipling’s adventure tale

“That was an incredible experience. It was very funny the way I got it. I was in Paris with my wife and I was staying at the Hotel Georges V, and about 11 on a Saturday morning, the phone rang and the voice said, ‘This is John Huston.’ I said, ‘OK, who is this?’ I thought it was one of my mates mucking about. He said, ‘This is John Huston. I have a movie I’d like you to do.’ I said, ‘That will be fantastic. When do you want to talk about it?’ He said, ‘Now, I’m at the bar next door.’ I went down and he said, ‘I was originally going to do this with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart, but they both passed away on me. I wanted to do it with you and Sean. I’ve already talked with Sean and he said he would do it.’ I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ Humphrey Bogart was one of my favorite actors and I got to play his part, which I thought was fantastic.”

“DRESSED TO KILL” (1980)

Caine plays a murderous cross-dressing

New York shrink in the Brian De Palma film.

“That was my only foray into transvestism. It was a very scary movie. I was a great fan of Brian De Palma. He came to me because every American actor turned him down. I’m sure because it was transvestism. But I wasn’t afraid of that. I had never done it. But I must say that women’s clothes are very uncomfortable. I hated them. Also, I had padded knickers because you have to put on hips. Fortunately for me, there was a real girl who did a lot of [the scenes]. She was 6 feet 2, the same as me and when we got made up, we looked very, very much alike.”

“HANNAH AND HER SISTERS” (1986)

Caine won his first supporting actor Oscar

in the Woody Allen romantic comedy

“I regarded that as Woody’s warmest film -- that wonderful Thanksgiving scene. It was very easy working with Woody.”

“DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS” (1988)

Caine and Steve Martin play

con men on the Riviera

“Guys like that movie. It’s the funniest film I ever made and the most successful comedy I ever made and it’s lasted.”

“THE CIDER-HOUSE RULES” (1999)

Caine earned his second supporting actor

Oscar as an orphanage doctor who

also performs abortions

“It gave me a chance to work with a lot of wonderful people, Tobey [Maguire] and Charlize [Theron]. I loved it and the kids. I loved the part. Also, I had an American accent. I hadn’t done that very much. It did very well.”

“BATMAN BEGINS” (2005)

“THE DARK KNIGHT” (2008)

Caine played Batman’s butler

and surrogate father Alfred

“I never had done these big movies, but when Christopher Nolan said do you want to play the part, I said yes. It was a wonderful part in both pictures. Very often in big blockbuster action movies the people are ciphers, but never in a Christopher Nolan movie.”