I wouldn’t call myself a geek, but I do sometimes teach Mommy and Daddy stuff about computers. And I do watch TV, but only informative programmes like the news and documentaries.
Something is wrong here, and it’s more than easy access to guns or violence on TV. It’s about lack of love and attachment to loving people early in life.
I want to continue doing as big a variety of things as I can do, and if that means I have the honor of getting to do more feature work, I would love that. I know that if I make any other long-term TV commitments, it’s not going to be on a drama.
When I first started writing for television in the seventies and eighties, the Internet didn’t exist, and we didn’t need to worry about foreign websites illegally distributing the latest TV shows and blockbuster movies online.
The first thing I do on a Sunday is five hours in front of the TV watching football, football, football. I watch my games back and pick out what didn’t go right and try to make sure it goes well next time.
I did an episode on the TV show ‘Awake,’ and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really hard.’ To do that so fast and to do that, if it’s very successful, for nine months out of the year, for a bunch of good years, that’s challenging. But, it was interesting. It’s a good show. You’d have to have a very good character, I guess.
There’s nothing that can beat the feeling of doing a movie or a TV show that makes everyone feel good.
Court TV will always hold a special place in my heart, and I will always look back at my time there with great gratitude and affection.
I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You’d get a broken arm. So I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart’s ‘The Caine Mutiny,’ which was playing in the theater across from the telephone booth where I learned that I’d gotten my first TV job.
I’ve got quite a big gay following. I played a lesbian prostitute in the TV series ‘Band Of Gold’ but I think my following really grew when I played one in the film ‘Imagine Me & You,’ with Piper Perabo.
I like to be home on a Friday night. I don’t go out. I don’t go to clubs. It’s not my thing. I sit at home with my glass of wine and watch hours of reality TV.
My father always said, ‘Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their book shelf’ – so I make sure I read.
It’s funny, because I don’t have a very addictive personality in any way except for things like stories or books or movies or TV. I just get, like, completely enamored and lost in that world, especially when one really hits the right way. Like, I just can’t do anything else.
Where I grew up, we had the three TV networks, maybe two radio stations, no cable TV. We still had a long-distance party line in our neighborhood, so you could listen to all your neighbors’ phone calls. We had a very small public library, and the nearest bookstore was an hour away.
I come from a culture where you don’t divide it up to what you can do on TV and what you can do on film.
I’m not one of those people that goes into details of my personal life on national TV to get attention. Some things are better left unsaid.
In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.
I work from a deep sense of insecurity. I have the belief, and I can’t shake it, that there are endless reasons to turn the channel. There are hundreds of channels and entirely other things to do besides TV. And if you make a bad television show there’s no reason for the audience to come back the following week.
People assume that because you are on TV you must be a millionaire, but unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.
I remember growing up always loving the guitar. I used to love to watch the people play on the Country Western shows on TV. My folks told me that when I was just a toddler, I used to pretend I was playing a guitar on a toothpick.
I wouldn’t wear turtlenecks. That I’m not envious of. But who knows? I might sneak out a few things and hope and pray that no one says, ‘Hey, didn’t you wear that when you were playing an enormous geek on TV?’
Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there’s a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.
When I was in school, I was always writing scripts and dressing up as characters. I’d constantly be that guy who’d get up on stage. I used to write imaginary TV shows, like soap operas, for fun.
After doing modeling and films, I was always keen on doing TV. It was in my to-do-list. So when ‘Kuch Rang Pyar Ke Aise Bhi’ happened, I was more than happy.
‘Wonder Showzen’ is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn’t know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.
