He also shared the reason he chose Kevin and Maggie as his dream team: “I approached Kevin first of all, who’s famously known as Kevin ‘Decline,’ but here he didn’t. He read the script and said he would do it. And then I went to Maggie. I can share with you this, but the two least flattering things that have been said to me by actors came from Kevin and Maggie. Maggie said, ‘Would you like to know, why, of all the scripts I have, I’ve chosen your film?’ I didn’t want to know why, but I thought it’d be rude, so I said ‘Why?’ and she said ‘Because I don’t have to die at the end of this film.’ Kevin then told me that he thought it was his last chance to get the girl.”
When asked if not getting the girl is what scares Kevin, he replied, “I was joking. You know as one ages, there are fewer and fewer roles where one gets the girl in the end. Usually my son gets the role and I get to die (laughs).”
My Old Lady tells the tale of New Yorker Mathias (Kevin Kline) who travels to Paris after learning that he’s inherited an apartment from his estranged father. His hopes of liquidating the apartment are crushed when he discovers that the elderly Mathilde (Maggie Smith) and her daughter (Kristin Scott Thomas) are living in the apartment and have no plans to leave. ~Marriska Fernandes