I met Jimmy at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the heart of Old Hollywood. I expected him to be late but he was already there, at his regular table, under the best light in the room. He was in his 70s and full of life and stories. As I sat next to him, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the legendary characters he’d played, all the incredible directors he’d worked with, but I just knew, to make sure he said yes to playing Tom, he didn’t have to I don’t seem not at all intimidated by it all. You don’t fight like that – I’ll teach you to box one day! Jimmy eased the way, saying that although he had made some movies for his money – he’d lost a house in each of his four divorce settlements, so he had no choice – he wasn’t thinking about doing Out of Blue. for this reason. Hell, there was hardly any money. What was the budget? How was that possible? When I pumped my fists in battle mode to say it could be done, he looked dismissive and said, “You don’t fight like that! I’ll teach you how to box one day!’ He was determined to get me in the ring, and somehow, over the next few months, he did. “He was obsessed with his characters and loved to hone in on the details” … Morley and Caan on set. It was an hour into our meeting before we even looked at the menu, and at that point Jimmy made me feel like I was the only vegetarian he’d ever met. I chose avocado on toast, which he claimed he had never heard of before. But he ordered it too, and when it arrived was the only time I saw him look surprised. It was gigantic and garnished with grapefruit. We started laughing and had a hard time stopping. However, he brought me to tears, as well as himself, when he told me that after making his first batch of dough, he bought his parents a limo – surprising them with it outside the tiny Bronx basement apartment he grew up in. he still had some left in him. Although his father drove the car on the streets with pride, he could not bring himself to be proud of his son. Even when Jimmy was a kid shining in a baseball game, his father had praised the skill of another teammate. All these decades later, Jimmy longed for the love he never felt from his father. It still hurt. The moment Jimmy said yes to being in Out of Blue I was on a high. On my return to the UK, his daily phone calls began and continued into pre-production in New Orleans. Ultimately, as much as I loved and was excited by everything he had to say, I was worried: we only had 28 days to shoot the film, and if he expected that much attention on set, I wasn’t going to make my deadline. In the next phone call I told him I didn’t have the luxury of time and we ended up fighting and yelling at each other. When we both calmed down we were laughing and I was fascinated when Jimmy said he enjoyed his in-depth conversations with Karel Rice on The Gambler and felt we did the same. When he determined that Tom had to wear a certain type of old-school golf shoe, his assistant showed costume designer Abby O’Sullivan a photo of Jimmy’s worn golf shoes. We speculated if Jimmy just wanted some new shoes, and maybe he did. After all, when the shoot was over, he left in all of his character’s clothes, saying, “Thanks for my new look, kid.” But it certainly wasn’t just that: he was obsessed with his characters and loved to perfect the details, from the inside out, from his shoes to his hat. “His Tom was perfectly squished” … Caan has his showdown with Toby Jones. I asked Toby Jones, who played the main murder suspect in the film, to take it easy during a violent confrontation scene, as Jimmy was not in very good health. Toby then said that the thrill of being in the orbit of this generation of screen actors lasted until Jimmy managed to find the strength to pin him to the wall and slam his cane into his neck. He gave it his all, and it showed: Tom was wonderfully smitten with him. I’ll never forget the moment, as we were leaving the Beverly Hills hotel that day, when Jimmy and I passed the piano player and he got into the theme from The Godfather. Jimmy stopped happily. “I hear!” he said. “Can you believe it?” I loved him because he retained every trace of fresh enthusiasm and that I never forgot how far he would go from being who he was: an amazing actor, a legend of cinema, one of the greats. There will never be another like him, but thankfully, for all that he gave of himself, in so many characters, he will always be with us.
