TORONTO - Michael Caine has had a prolific movie career, but the screen legend says he could quit at any time.
"I don't have to work, and I just sit there -- if a movie comes in that I want to do, I will do it, if one never comes in that I want to do, then I'm retired," Caine, 76, told The Canadian Press on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival.
"But there won't be any announcement in the papers that Michael Caine is retired," he noted with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll be like the old soldier I am and fade away -- very nicely, quietly."
Caine took a rare 18-month break before filming "Harry Brown," a thriller in which he plays an ex-marine pensioner who takes up arms against a group of young thugs who have murdered his only friend.
Since wrapping in March, he's been on another break. But he says he isn't ready to call it quits just yet.
"There's a script which I like very much, which is called 'Cold War Requiem,"' said Caine, adding that Susan Sarandon was interested in playing his wife in the film.
"It's about an old spy from the '60s in the Cold War, who's now retired -- just like me, an old guy. And his enemies come back to kill him because of what he did in those days. ... It's a very good thriller. it might get done, it might not."
He will also be a part of the next instalment in the rebooted Batman franchise, in which he plays Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's beloved butler. He says that they won't film a sequel "for ages."
"I would imagine that would be about 2011," he said.
Meanwhile, he has a small role in "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan's upcoming film, "Inception."
Caine said Nolan only needed him on set for one day.
"He said: `There's no part for you, just do this day,' so I did that day," Caine said of the director.
"I'm his mascot. I'm his lucky charm."
"Harry Brown" is due in theatres this fall.
