When Last Orders opens Friday, it's the casting that will command attention. Australian writer-director Fred Schepisi drew from the cream of the British acting crop for his adaptation of Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel: Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. Ray Winstone, familiar to American audiences from this summer's art-house hit Sexy Beast, is also in the cast.

Last Orders focuses primarily on a daylong road trip taken by four men across southeastern England after the death of a butcher named Jack Dodds (Caine). Three are Jack's pub pals--a gambler (Hoskins), an undertaker (Courtenay) and an ex-boxer (Hemmings)--and the fourth is his son (Winstone), a used-car dealer. The widow (Mirren) chooses not to accompany them, preferring to visit their long-institutionalized daughter. Multiple flashbacks illuminate the details of each person's relationship with Jack.

"Last Orders" has a dual meaning that may not immediately be apparent to American audiences: Jack's dying wishes to have his old friends scatter his remains at sea, and the phrase used by English barkeepers that is equivalent to "last call" in the States. Winstone's character drives them all to cold, rainy Margate on the English coast.

As Schepisi later said of the casting: "Every one of these actors are basically from that background directly, or very similar, so they come invested with the very fabric of that life. They reveled at that chance, to play their own lives as reality."

The three actors who play Caine's buddies visited L.A. recently to talk about the film.

Hoskins, 59, who won an Oscar nomination as the hood in Mona Lisa (1986) and popular success as the private eye from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) has in recent years played a number of historical figures, including Winston Churchill in TV's When Lions Roared (1994), J. Edgar Hoover in Nixon (1995) and Nikita Khrushchev in this year's Enemy at the Gates. Alternately serious and funny, he spoke with a heavy Cockney accent.

Courtenay, 64, was nominated twice for an Oscar, for Dr. Zhigavo (1965), and the title role in The Dresser (1983). Soft-spoken, he shushed a reporter who called him "Sir Tom"--he was knighted earlier this year--and glanced at his fellow actors with the remark "it upsets them," which met with uproarious laughter.

Hemmings, 60, is still best-known for his star-making role as the photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni's classic Blow-Up (1966) and, although he has made dozens of other films (including 1968's Barbarella, 1977's Islands in the Stream, and a bit as Cassius in last year's Gladiator), he is better known as a film and TV director. The most theatrical of the three, he chain-smoked and answered questions very deliberately in a raspy basso profundo voice. When he arrived, flamboyantly attired in a hot pink sweater, pink checked shirt and Panama hat, all three embraced warmly.

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Question: Assembling all of you at the same time must have been difficult for Schepisi.

Hoskins: No, it was a quick con, a total con.

Q: How so?

Hoskins: He phoned me up and said, "Right, Michael's doing it, David's doing it, Tom's doing it, Helen's doing it, Ray's doing it. Well, you're going to do it, aren't you?" We all met up on the set and said, "I did this 'cause you were in it." "No, I did it 'cause you were in it." [Laughter] "I thought you were in it"--"No, you were in it first, what are you talking about?" It was a total con. He didn't have any of us. [Laughter]

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Q: What was it about this project that appealed to you?

Hoskins: It was so clearly the kind of people that I remember as a child. All these fellas are like my uncles, very much like that. But the observations, the way Graham has written them in the book, Fred has added to them. Slight little observations. It took a foreigner to see London life.

Hemmings: There is nothing in life like having four guys in a car, going to places that are so fascinating as Dartford Tunnel and Margate Pier....[sarcastic laughter]

Courtenay: I was attracted by this journey, you see. Any story, a play, anything, has to be a kind of journey. Of course there's a lot more to the film, but these men are going on a journey; they meet with a purpose, to go somewhere, that day.

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Q: Do all of you have working-class roots like your characters?

Courtenay (to Hemmings): You're a bit lower middle?

Hemmings (to Courtenay): Lower middle.

Courtenay: That's quite a degree or two above working. [Laughter] But it doesn't show now.

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Q: But you could easily identify with these working-class individuals.

Hemmings: Well, I haven't been to pubs. [Everyone roars with laughter.] So I wouldn't know anything about that.

Courtenay: You saw, when he walked in and we hadn't seen him, the way we greeted one another. We didn't act it. It's perfectly genuine and that, in a way, was the pleasure for me of the film. These mates and the journey.

Hoskins: It's the best time I've ever had.

Hemmings: There are three parts to the story, as you obviously know. The first part is Michael['s character] dying and Helen looking after not only him but also an extremely sick daughter. Then there is the part of the boys carrying the ashes to Margate. We essentially are that part of the story. Then there is the other part of the story, which is Helen and Bob's relationship, their love story. 

Q: Was there any jockeying around of parts between you? Did someone start out being cast in one role and wind up in another?

Hoskins: I think they tried to find a skinny Bob Hoskins and they couldn't.

Hemmings: And they were always trying to find a fat David Hemmings and they did.

Hoskins: But the first one who was cast was Tom.

Courtenay: He [Schepisi] happened to be nearby, and he asked me. And I thought, "Well, what do you want me to play that part for?" Because it's the most boring.

Hoskins: No, it's not.

Courtenay: He persuaded me. I couldn't have played any other.

Hemmings: You couldn't have played Lenny [the ex-boxer].

Courtenay: No, certainly not.

Hoskins [to Hemmings]: And you as an undertaker, for God's sakes.

Hemmings: I would be terrible as an undertaker.

Hoskins: Who's gonna die with you around?

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Q: With this high-powered cast, wasn't there a certain amount of competition for screen time or key scenes?

Hoskins: There was quite a substantial group feeling. We've all been there; we've all done it. Nobody had anything to prove.

Courtenay: Nobody was trying to score off anybody. People listened to one another. We were very much together in that.

Hoskins: It's in the script that both of us [Hoskins and Hemmings] walk into the loo and cry. We said, "If we both go in and cry, we're going to cancel each other out. So who's going to do the crying, and who's going to do the quiet suffering?"

Hemmings: Bob said, "Are you going to take the high road or are you going to take the low road?" And I said, "Well, what are you going to do?" Bob said, "I'll take the low road." And I said, "OK, I'll take the high road." I went for the full Monty, the full tears and everything, and Bob underplayed it. All through the shoot it was like that.

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Q: If Schepisi had made this movie 10 or 20 years ago, do you think he might have rounded out the cast by getting some of your profession's legendary boozers, like Oliver Reed or Richard Burton?

Courtenay: We've got to be careful what we say here. [Laughter] Fred's pretty shrewd. I mean, that's why he was so keen to get me--someone very sympathetic and sensitive. [The others erupt in laughter, pounding fists on the table.]

Hemmings: Excuse me, but what do you mean by "getting the boozers?" He got the boozers!

Hoskins: Like, OK, we did go and have a drink ...

Hemmings: Excuse me?

Hoskins [ignoring Hemmings]: ... but not to the extent that it would affect the work. If you affected the work while you were drinking, you were letting everyone down. Not just us, but the crew as well.

Courtenay: That's why [Fred] told us off. We were having too good a time.

Hemmings: Here's a tiny little anecdote. We were in Canterbury Square, about to go into the cathedral. We might have had just a glass or two the night before--we never actually drank too much--but there was a gift shop and in the gift shop they had masses of little bottles of malt whiskey. It was freezing cold. So we walked in and we said, "Mm hmmm, this looks quite good to me." We'd just have a little and, "OK, we're ready now." That was the sort of flavor we had.

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Q: So what would you say this movie is about?

Hemmings: It's exactly as Tom said, a journey movie on so many levels: on life, on bits and pieces, odds and sods; and I think that's lovely.

Courtenay: I'd say it's about friendship, in a word, the ties that brought them together, the genuine connections.

Hoskins: It's about ordinary people, as complicated and as simple as they are.