Senior citizen Caine is on a roll

At the age of 67, after some 100 films, Michael Caine can best be described right now as a rising star.

Just five years ago he seemed to be nearing the end of the road after a stream of duds (Bullseye!, Blue Ice, Bullet To Beijing) and a self-imposed two-year sabbatical. But his spectacular comeback began in 1999 with a Golden Globe for Little Voice, and since then there has simply been no stopping him.

Last year brought Caine his second Oscar for The Cider House Rules (the first was for Hannah And Her Sisters). This was briskly followed by a BAFTA Fellowship, at which his spiky acceptance speech ('Maybe I will feel more welcome in my own country than I have up until now') established him for many as a world-class whinger. Whether or not this sense of rejection was justified at the time, he then indisputably became one of the Establishment with a knighthood under his real name of Maurice Micklewhite.

I caught up with him in San Sebastian, Spain, where he had dropped by to collect yet another award, for Lifetime Achievement. This time there was no carping: Caine rewarded his hosts with a genial, smoothly professional press conference crackling with pithy - if, one suspects, well-aired - anecdotes.

Our subsequent meeting, in the town's crumbling old five-star hotel, begins bang on time (something which, with top celebrities, is highly irregular). He is unfailingly courteous. And the voice, so widely parodied, does not disappoint - it is just as you would expect, only more so. If you were to do an impression of Caine with a voice like that, you'd be accused of gross exaggeration.

His new film, Quills, is about the Marquis de Sade towards the end of his life, when, with the aim of silencing him, the maverick aristocratic pornographer was locked up in the Charenton lunatic asylum. Caine's take on the story is a quirky one, since he sees de Sade - hardly a role model in most people's eyes - as the hero of the piece.

'There was a very liberal regime in Charenton, run by a monk, and de Sade was smuggling his manuscripts out through a laundry girl. The nation was appalled by the filth he was writing, so Napoleon sent a very severe doctor, Royer-Collard, whom I play, to take over the asylum. He couldn't murder a member of the aristocracy so he took de Sade's pens - his quills - away. But then he started writing on his suit and on the walls with his own blood and excreta, or dictating his ideas to the other inmates. They couldn't stop him. The film is really to do with the freedom to write, no matter what it is. He's played by Geoffrey Rush and it's an extraordinary performance, even though he's a bit on the thin side because when the Marquis de Sade was in Charenton he weighed only 400lb!'

This last remark is a typical Caine touch. He researches his roles thoroughly - at least, the ones that matter to him - while affecting a blokey, ust-in-it-for-the-money-and-a-laugh nonchalance.

'I'm not one of those actors who say, "I must give the world my Hamlet." I'm pragmatic. American actors tear themselves apart for a scene. British actors are lazy; we just do it. I'm joking and messing about right up until the start of the take, even if it's a very emotional scene. You've got to relax. The minute an actor causes any tension on the set, I walk away. I say, "You pull yourself together and I'll come back when you're ready to laugh." And it works.'

In his next film, Shiner, Caine plays a character who required less research than usual, a boxing impresario from the same rough London streets where the actor grew up. 'It wasn't till I was 14 that I met a preacher who was taking hooligans - and that's what I was - off the streets. I joined a youth club and got a taste for acting. It was quite weird playing somebody who, with a little less luck, I could have become myself.'