The lunch venue today is The Union in Soho, London. Sir Michael Caine turns up first, looking younger than his 74 years, in a black leather jacket, his blue shirt open at the neck. Jude Law, 34, arrives half an hour later, straight off the plane from Toronto, where a week earlier both actors – a generation apart, but with what quickly transpires to be much in common – had been working the red carpet promoting Sleuth, a British thriller starring them both and directed by Kenneth Branagh. Caine’s connection with the project goes back much further, however.

Originally an Anthony Shaffer play, back in 1972 Joe Mankiewicz’s film version paired Caine, then every inch a new kind of leading man, with another, older giant of British acting, Sir Laurence Olivier, as two very different men duelling over a woman. This time around it was Law who came up with the idea of reworking the piece, and Law who asked Harold Pinter to write a new script based on the same premise – that two men meet in an isolated house and fight, verbally and then physically, over a woman, with wit and weapons. And this time, Caine plays the role of Andrew Wyke – Olivier’s part in the original – while Law plays the younger Milo Tindle. The film was shot at breakneck speed in a remarkable 23 days, at Twickenham Studios, where Caine filmed scenes for both Zulu and his 1966 breakthrough movie, Alfie, which was remade in 2004 and starred… Jude Law.

The pair, separated by 40 years, clearly like each other, but seem more at ease expressing admiration whenever the other is out of earshot. “I’ve always been a great admirer of Michael’s work,” Law tells me when Caine has left the table. “He really is a lovely bloke and such a laugh to be with. I love him to bits.” Caine feels likewise. “I rate him very highly,” he says while we wait for Law to arrive. “I wouldn’t have done the picture otherwise. I can’t act with bad actors. I become bad myself if I act with them. They bring you down. Jude is a wonderful actor.”

Yet this meeting is in no way a luvvie-in. Caine confesses that he’s never actually watched Law in the remake of his own, iconic Alfie movie. “No, I didn’t. I saw the reviews and I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ It didn’t work,” he says. “And I didn’t think Jude would work – he looks far too smart and knowing. I played Alfie as a sort of primitive. The last line I say in that movie is, ‘What’s it all about?’ The minute Jude walks on, you know that here is a guy who knows exactly what everything’s all about.”

For lunch, Caine orders linguine with a glass of New Zealand sauvignon, Law has chicken and mash with sparkling water. Next stop for both will be New York, but for the moment Caine and Law are happy to be back on home turf with time to chat.

Michael Caine “Nice haircut.”

Jude Law [Laughs] “Thanks.”

MC “It’s all right for you; you’re very lucky because you have a great-shaped head. If you were a Bacon Bonce it would be different.”

Conversation turns to films, festivals and remakes, including The Assassination of Jesse James with Brad Pitt, and Olivier.

JL “It makes me laugh, because they’ve been going on at us about remakes. Do you know how many Jesse James movies there are? Fourteen!”

MC “Somebody said to Ken Branagh that Sleuth was a remake, and Ken said, ‘Never mind that, most of the stuff I’ve done are remakes. Are you suggesting we never do Othello again?’ I would never have done just a remake. I thought the original Sleuth was fine and you couldn’t do much to improve on that. What brought me into it was when Jude told me that it would be Pinter.”

JL “Harold is a fascinating, brilliant, complicated, dark writer.”

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