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Sir Michael Caine in Sixties

The Seventies, Success and Shakira

Award Winning Eighties

The New Millennium - Arise Sir Michael

2010 to Present

The comeback Nineties

On the 14th March, 1933, Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in St Olave’s Hospital, Rotherhithe, Bermondsey in South London to parents Ellen Frances Marie (nee Burchell) and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite.

Michael’s father worked as a Billingsgate Fish Market porter and his mother was a charwoman. In 1935, his younger brother Stanley was born. Michael grew up in Southwark, South London, but was evacuated to North Runcton in Norfolk during the Second World War. After the war, the family were rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens at Elephant and Castle, due to much of London’s housing being destroyed during the Blitz.

In 1944, Michael won a scholarship to Hackney Downs Grocers’ School and after a year there he moved to Wilson’s Grammar School. He left at 16 and then worked briefly as a filing clerk for Peak Films – his closest step to Hollywood yet.

From 1951 Michael completed his National Service and served in the Queens Royal Regiment and the Royal Fusiliers, spending time in Germany and on active duty during the Korean War. As a soldier in Korea, Michael got into a situation where he knew he faced death and the memory of that experience has lasted with him forever and formed his character for the rest of his life.

After his time in the Army, Michael went to work at Westminster Repertory in Horsham, Sussex, followed by time at Lowestoft Repertory, where he met his soon-to-be wife Patricia Haines.

Once they were married, Michael and Patricia decided to go to London to pursue their acting careers. Unfortunately this proved hard and Michael had to take a lot of soul destroying jobs.

On top of this, financial circumstances were dire and Patricia had became pregnant, later to give birth to Michael’s first daughter, Dominique. Although this was a happy event for the Caine family, Michael found it hard to cope with lack of job opportunities and finance, and after two and a half years of marriage, Patricia took Dominique back to her parents’ home. This signalled the end of the marriage, which lasted from 1955 -1962.

Suffering with a huge amount of guilt, out of work and penniless, Michael returned home to his family. His father was bedridden with rheumatism and unable to work, so Michael was forced to take a job in a steel yard. Unfortunately Michael’s father died and shortly after Michael lost his job in the steel yard.

His mother advised him to get away and sort himself out, so upon this advice, Michael chose to go to Paris. During his tenure in the French capital, he survived living in a tiny room in a fleapit hotel and worked in a snack bar. Eventually Michael felt ready to return home.

On arriving home he found a telegram from his agent, stating that there was a job for him – a part in a film titled “A Hill in Korea.” Unfortunately the film wasn’t a success and Michael decided to find a new agent. Despite this the work wasn’t pouring in. Michael was then sent to the Theatre Workshop in the East End of London where he played a part in the show of Charles Dickens, titled “The Chimes”.

After the Theatre Workshop, Michael visited a casting agency, where he was chosen to play the part of a policeman in a small film. This was the first of many small jobs like these.

Four years of minor roles was getting to Michael and he was very close to giving up the business when his agent found him a job on TV in a play called “The Lark.” At this time Michael was known as Michael Scott however his agent informed him that there was already a Michael Scott performing as an actor in London, so he had to come up with a new name. Speaking from a telephone box in Leicester Square, Michael looked around and saw that “The Caine Mutiny” was being shown at the Odeon. He decided to change his name to Michael Caine. Michael has later joked that had a tree been blocking his view, he might have been known as Michael Mutiny!

The next few years carried on the same as before, with Michael living hand to mouth, being helped out by friends, with the occasional film or TV bit part.

At the end of the 1950s, Michael’s agent, Josephine Burton, passed away. This meant that Michael had to find a new agent. One of the biggest movie companies in Britain at the time was Associated British Pictures, who ran their operations like an old Hollywood studio, with a rota of actors under contract. Michael went to see their Chief Casting Director, where he was told to give up acting. This just made him even more determined to succeed.

On Michael’s return to London he was arrested for the non-payment of maintenance to Patricia and Dominique Micklewhite and was ordered by the court to pay 3 pounds and 10 shillings per week, which was all Michael had on him at the time, or go to jail. months.

"He was told to give up acting"

1960 came with a rocky start but financially it was Michael’s best year so far. He played a small part in a BBC Book Programme in which they dramatised the book under discussion. This wasn’t an earth shattering job but it meant that Michael met the director John McGrath, who became a good friend. Michael also met the playwright Harold Pinter, who wrote the play “The Room’, in which Michael appeared in.

As Michael got to know John McGrath even better, this led to him starring in McGrath’s TV play called “The Compartment”. This play proved to be a success in many ways for Michael as it proved to many people that he could remember 45 minutes of dialogue. But the most satisfying and beneficial sign that the play, and Michael, were a success, came a little while after it was broadcast – Roger Moore, who was already famous for the series “Ivanhoe”, walked up to Michael and told him that he was going to be a big star.

Thanks to the success of “The Compartment”, Michael had five major parts on TV that year and also starred in a play by Troy Kennedy Martin, who would later go on to write the film “The Italian Job”.

After seeing “The Compartment”, Dennis Selinger, one of the biggest agents in England, had taken on Michael as a client. He sent Michael a play from a producer called Michael Codron – “Next Time I’ll Sing to You” by James Saunders. The play was a big hit with the critics and ended up moving from the Arts Theatre to the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly. At long last, Michael was in the West End.

One night, at the end of a performance of “Next Time I’ll Sing to You”, Stanley Baker, one of the biggest stars in British cinema, came backstage to speak to Michael. He told him about a part in the film “Zulu”.

It was 1963. Michael had replaced London for the Drakensberg Mountains in northern South Africa for the filming of “Zulu.” It took three months to film and Michael was very homesick – once the plane took off back home from Johannesburg airport, there was a loud cheer.

Michael returned to London with most of his £4000 free intact, as accommodation and meals had been free during filming and there was nowhere else to spend money. Michael immediately went to see Dominique, who was now eight years old, and crazy for horses. So Michael bought her one.

Michael’s mother was his next concern. He was not happy with her living in a prefab in such a rough area so he moved her into a flat in Brixton. This was ideal as the building was actually a big house divided into flats and some of the other people living there were of similar age to Michael’s mother. She now felt safe and secure and had company. Michael saw the happiness that he could bring to his mother from his success and it was a source of tremendous joy.

"1960 came with a rocky start"

In order to get the part in “Zulu” Michael had to sign a seven year contract with Embassy Pictures. This was to protect their investment in Michael; however the option was on their side only. Unfortunately the day came when Michael received a call to say that Embassy Pictures would not be taking up his option.

The reviews for “Zulu” were positive and from this Michael got to play the lead part of spy Harry Palmer in one of his most recognised films, “The Ipcress File”. Michael also received a seven year contract and now, aged 32, life was really changing. Suddenly he was able to indulge himself in all the material tings that had been missing so far.

After the director Lewis Gilbert saw a rough cut of “The Ipcress File”, Michael was offered the title role of “Alfie.” The reviews of “Alfie” were great and it established Michael as a genuine star.

Suddenly Michael ended up in New York to publicise “Alfie” and “The Ipcress File” and his impossible dream had come true. The latter had proven to be a such a success, Michael was offered more roles as Harry Palmer in the films based on Len Deighton’s novels.

After this he was offered a part in Otto Preminger’s new film “Hurry Sundown” for which he needed to perfect a southern, Louisiana accent. As soon as this was done, he went from Louisiana to Helsinki to film the third in the Harry Palmer series of spy films, “Billion Dollar Brain.”

Along the line Michael had picked up a two picture deal with Twentieth Century Fox and time had come to do the first one – “Deadfall”. of spy films, “Billion Dollar Brain.”

Michael had now settled into a period where he had no social life at all, but just went from one film to another. The moment Michael finished “Deadfall” in the studio in London, he was on a plane to Spain to start another film, a Harry Saltzman production called “Play Dirty”. Brain.”

Finally it was back to London for a short respite before returning to Majorca to make “The Magus”, which, along with “Deadfall”, was the second of Michael’s two picture deal with Twentieth Century Fox, but was a critical disaster. Michael Caine himself has said that it was one of the worst films he had been involved in.

After three years of travelling and starring in films, Michael was finally home in London again and it wax his priority to find a new flat. He found a beautiful home in Grosvenor Square which had three bedrooms, two large houses, a big hall, an office, a vast kitchen in which you could dine, plus a dining room which Michael immediately turned into a little cinema with a 16mm projector. The flat was filled with state-of-the-art stereo and TV equipment and brand new furniture. He gave his old flat to his brother Stanley, with everything in it. Stanley was not working in the book department of Selfridges where he was very happy. Michael, now comfortably ensconced in his new abode, looked as his life to see if there was anything missing. After great consideration he came to the consideration that now, at the age of 35, it was time to acquire a car. He couldn’t drive. But he had enough money for a chauffeur.

Michael’s next film, and possibly most famous, “The Italian Job”, started shooting in London, directed by a young newcomer called Peter Collinson. This was followed by an all-star cast blockbuster movie, “The Battle of Britain”.

"that girl, she's beautiful. I want to meet her"

Michael went on to film “Too Late the Hero”, a World War II story of a battle between a small unit of British soldiers and one American, against the Japanese. Now that it was 1970 and Michael was starring in more films, he decided he wanted his mother to have her own house.

She was still living in the block of flats in Brixton along with other relatives. Michael then bought a big house in Streatham in South London and split it into flats so everyone could move there.

The next plan for Michael was for him to become a Producer and he went into partnership with a friend called Michael Klinger, who was a Producer by profession. Michael had the rights to a book called “Jack’s Return Home”, which together they filmed under the title of “Get Carter.” Unfortunately when the film came out it was slammed by most critics for the violence – it was just too realistic.

The next film Michael made was the only one for which he was never paid. It was called “Kidnapped” and was based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Filming took place on location in Scotland, but after three hard months of filming, Michael knew that this film was going to be a dud. He was now drinking heavily and smoking about 80 cigarettes a day, so consequently was not in the best of spirits. He decided to take himself off to the countryside to attempt rehabilitation.

kidnapped One evening Michael was at a party when he felt someone reach into his pocket, remove his cigarettes and throw them in the fire. This person turned out to be Tony Curtis. He said “I’ve been watching you, that’s the third cigarette you have lit since you entered the room and you have only been here 20 minutes.” Tony then proceeded to give Michael a lecture on the dangers of smoking and he did this with such skills that Michael gave up there and then.

It was about time for Michael to look for a new home and he found a beautiful 200 year old water mill in a little village just outside Windsor, called Clewer. It had a 100 yards of frontage to the Thames, a small stream running through the middle of it and the actual house stood right on the main side-stream and millrace with the millwheel in it. It wasn’t in a good state and the garden was derelict, but this was exactly what Michael was looking for. He decided that garden would be his therapy. It was perfect.

Michael later received a phone call from Dennis saying that he was sending a script for a film for him to star in with Elizabeth Taylor. It was called “Zee and Co” and was written by Edna O’ Brien.

One night in 1971, Michael and his friend Paul were watching TV when an advert for Maxwell House coffee came on. On screen was the most beautiful girl Michael had ever seen. The effect she was having on Michael was extraordinary. Michael’s friend Paul asked him what was wrong and Michael replied, “that girl, she’s beautiful. I want to meet her”. The following evening, at a club, Michael bumped into Nigel Politzer, who worked for the company that made the commercial. Nigel told Michael that the girl’s name was Shakira Baksh and that she lived somewhere in Fulham Road. He agreed to phone Shakira for Michael the following morning.

One restless night later and Michael awoke to a phone call from Nigel, informing him that Shakira had agreed to a call from him. Michael decided that he would take the bull by the horns and called her asking her out for dinner. Shakira said that she was busy for the nbext week and asked Michael to ring her in ten days’ time.

For ten days Michael was in a trance. Eventually he rang her again and she agreed to go for a meal but she would pick him up. Shakira arrived at 8 o ‘clock and Michael could not believe how beautiful she was. As he took her hand he could feel vibrations through his hands and he though of something the French say about love: L’amour, c’est une question de peau (love is a question of skin). Michael suddenly realised that he had not even spoken yet so he asked Shakira to come in, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat and had another go. Shakira came into Michael’s flat and into this life forever.

After that evening Michael saw Shakira constantly, until she had to go off and do a modelling job in Mexico and Michael had to go to Malta to make a movie called “Pulp”. Michael and Shakira talked as often as they could by phone and the moment Shakira finished working, she joined Michael in Malta. They’ve remained together ever since.

Back in England, Michael invited Shakira to move into his flat and they settled down to a sort of married life. Very soon the lease was up on the flat and they decided to live in Windsor full time without a London base. It was at this time that Shakira pointed out to Michael that he was drinking two or more bottles of vodka a day. This came as a complete surprise to Michael and was such a shock that he gave up drinking altogether for a year. Life was suddenly completely different and absolutely perfect. To top it off, Michael received an invitation to star opposite Lawrence Oliver in the film version of the Anthony Shaffer play “Sleuth”.

In January 1973, Michael and Shakira decided to get married in Las Vegas. They decided that they didn’t want a big fuss and these chose the romantically named “Little Chapel on the Green”.

Later that year, in July, Shakira gave birth to a baby girl of 6lb and 12 oz, whom they called Natasha.

Michael’s next movie in England was called “The Romantic English Women” and was his first foray into the realms of artistic films. The film was not only very convoluted, but in Michael’s own words, ‘it was downright grim’. Michael decided to do it though because the director Joe Losey had a tremendous reputation for being artistic. “The Romantic English woman” not only flopped financially but the critics didn’t like it either.

the-romantic-english-women Michael and Shakira spent mini honeymoons in Paris, usually over a long weekend every three or four months. During one of these trips Michael received a phone call from John Huston, causing him to nearly drop the phone. John Huston was the one director whom Michael actually idolised so was surprised when he was invited to come and meet him at his hotel – he wanted Michael to be in his film of a short story by Rudyard Kipling – “The Man Who would be King”.

The night before they started shooting the film, Michael and John were having dinner when John dropped the bombshell that the girl who was to play the part o the beautiful Indian princess was no longer available. Shakira was sitting at the table and suddenly said firmly: “I am not going to play the part.” Of course, over the following days John persuaded her to take the part. Michael is very proud of his role in “The Man Who Would be King” and feels that it is one of the finest films that he has been in.

It’s now 1976 and Michael’s next movie was in England on location in a place called Muapledurham. The film was called “The Eagle Has Landed” and was the story of a band of German commandos who were sent to England during the war to assassinate Winston Churchill.

One of Michael’s dreams had been to open a restaurant and one day he was introduced to Peter Langan, who already owned a restaurant. He told Michael to come and see him when he was ready. When Peter next saw Michael he told him that he had taken on a lease of a very well known restaurant called Coq D’or. Peter offered Michael a third share of the action for £25,000. Michael accepted. On a quiet Monday night, Langan’s Brasserie opened to just a few friends and passers-by, but it didn’t take long for it to become the place to be seen.

On a very different Monday, Michael’s account asked to see him as a matter of urgency. It turned out that Michael and Shakira would either have to cut their standard of living or leave England, as Michael was paying so much tax he was being left penniless. Michael and Shakira decided to move to Los Angeles, the only trouble was the houses were very expensive. Michael immediately accepted a role in the film “The Silver Bears”, followed by a film called “The Swarm” and earned £250,000 to put towards his house in America.

On the 3rd January, 1979, Michael and Shakira flew to Lose Angeles after selling the Mill House to Jimmy Page of the rock group Led Zeppelin, for three quarters of a million pounds. Michael and Shakira settled into their new home quickly and soon were receiving invites from many people. Michael’s work situation, however, was not quite so rosy.

Before they left England Michael had done a short stint on a brilliant movie called “California Suite” by Neil Simon. For the first time Michael was playing a homosexual and Michael got good reviews for his portrayal, as did the film. Once Michael was in Hollywood, he was rescued by his old friend Irwin Allen, who invited him to star in “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,” a sequel to his successful “The Poseidon Adventure”.

"either have to cut their standard of living or leave England"

Professionally, Michael’s luck was still running cold and unfortunately he ended up with four clunkers in a row. He needed a miracle and this came in the shape of a film entitled “Dressed to Kill” – he played a transvestite psychiatrist murderer.

After three years in America it was time for Michael to travel again for filming. This time he ended up in Hungary where he starred in the film “Escape to Victory.”

Although Michael was enjoying his life in Los Angeles, he knew deep down that his heart was still in England. He could now legally spend 90 days per year in England and he tried to use them up every year.

Michael found that he had become a sort of British Social Ambassador whenever royalty or the aristocracy came to visit America. On one occasion that Michael was in attendance, he found his mind wondering, when he heard a familiar voice – the Queen. She asked Michael if he knew any jokes, to which he replied “yes, but very few that I could tell you.” She prompted him to “have a go” and she’d tell him one. For the rest of the evening they swapped jokes.

“She asked Michael if he knew any jokes” Whilst he was offered a role in “Norma Ray”, he turned it down in favour of “Educating Rita”, a film about a working class girl who tries to better herself with education and her relationship with the professor who becomes her mentor. Michael played the role of Dr. Frank Bryant and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, as well as an Oscar nomination.

This was followed by a not-so-successful film, “The Honorary Consul” which saw Michael travel to Mexico to shoot the film. He hated leaving without his family but Natasha was happy at Marymount School in Westwood and Shakira was content with her life in Hollywood. The picture was not well received and to top it off, the title was changed to “Beyond the Limit”, detracting away from the fact he played the Consul in the film.

Michael and Shakira had been in Hollywood for five years and made some tremendous friends whilst enjoying a happy, comfortable life. However, Michael had been unhappy for some time and Shakira had noticed this. They made a deal that if his performance in “Educating Rita” didn’t get an Oscar, they wouldn’t stay in America. Robert Duvall went on to win the Oscar for best actor (though Michael did win a BAFTA), so it was time for Michael to go home.

Before looking for a new home in England, Michael worked on his next project, “Blame it on Rio”, a risqué comedy about a man who is seduced by his best friend’s young daughter.

In the summer of 1984 Michael and Shakira decided to look for a new home in England. After a long search they eventually found an ideal property in Oxfordshire and agreed to rent it for the summer and then buy it. The project was in a mess and would need a lot of renovation to make it as Michael and Shakira wanted. In November 1984, Michael went to New York to film “Hannah and Her Sisters”.

In June 1985, Michael’s friend Marty Bregman invited him to play a small, but smashing part, in his new film “Sweet Liberty”. The following February Michael went back to England to film Freddie Forsyth’s novel “The Fourth Protocol”.

More travelling ensued as Michael worked on a small budged movie called “The Whistle Blower” in the south of France, before heading back to Los Angeles with Shakira to do more packing.

Michael was offered a small part in the fourth of the “Jaws” series of films. The film was a commercial flop but Michael has famously said “I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it was terrific.” Despite the film being abysmal, whilst he was filming in Nassau, he was informed that he had won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film “Hannah and her Sisters”.

The house in Oxfordshire was finally finished in the summer of 1987 and was ready for the Caine family to move into.

In 1988 a writer-director called David Wicked sent Michael a script based on a new and intriguing theory of the true identity of Jack the Ripper. He wanted Michael to play the real life detective who investigated the Ripper case. This became a miniseries and was a massive success all over the world.

Michael then starred in a comedy movie called “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”, followed by a small budget thriller called “Shock to the System”.

"She asked Michael if he knew any jokes"

One Michael’s return to England, he plunged straight into his second miniseries for TV, “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”.

Michael’s next role was in the movie version of “Noises Off” which was to be made at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. This gave Michael and Shakira a chance to find a home to buy there.

In 1992 Michael produced “Blue Ice” and opened a new restaurant “The Canteen” in Chelsea Harbour. He then played Scrooge in the Muppets movie version of the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol”. He also wrote his first autobiography “What’s it all About?”. In the 1992 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Michael was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

However, the 90s weren’t great for Michael as his career began to falter with a series of below-par films. These included Steven Seagal’s environmental action film “On Deadly Ground” in 1994 and “Bloody and Wine”, a 1996 thriller which co-starred Jack Nicholson and Judy Davis. He also starred in two straight-to-video Harry Palmer sequels as well as a few television films.

Towards the end of the decade, Michael Caine’s career began to rebound. He was becoming well recognised through his TV work, such as his stint in he 1997 miniseries “Mandela and de Klerk”. He also kept himself busy through his restaurant work and enjoyed a new wave of appreciation from younger filmmakers who praised him as the film industry’s enduring model of British cool – his films “Get Carter” and “The Italian Job” had immortalised him as the definitive figure of cool.

Michael starred in the acclaimed film “Little Voice” in 1998. He won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a seedy talent agent. Returning to form, Michael got better roles, such as his role of an abortionist in “The Cider House Rules”, for which he won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

"he won his second Academy Award"

In the 2000 New Year Honours, Michael was knighted as Sir Maurice Micklewhite CBE in recognition of his contribution to cinema. The same year he also received a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award.

The start of the new millennium saw Michael go from strength to strength. His career had been revitalised and he had a newfound popularity with younger fans who were appreciating his earlier efforts. He scored a hit with the art-house film “Quills” as his turn as Dr Royer-Collard.

He also appeared in “Miss Congeniality” and in 2001 starred in “Last Orders”. The following year he showed that he still had it as he played a star turn in “The Quiet American”, which saw him Oscar nominated for Best Actor. He also played the humorous role of Nigel Powers, the father of Mike Myer’s protagonist in “Austin Power in Goldmember”. Several of Michael’s popular films were remade during this decade, such as “The Italian Job”, “Get Carter”, “Alfie” and “Sleuth”. In the latter, he took the role that Laurence Olivier played in the 1972 version and Jude Law played Michael’s original role.

In 2003 Michael co-starred with Robert Duvall in “Secondhand Lions” and in 2004 he played the family elder, Henry Lair, in “Around the Bend.” 2005 saw Michael play a pivotal part in the rebooted Batman franchise when he was cast as Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred Pennyworth in “Batman Begins”.

When Michael was asked by director Christopher Nolan to play the part of Alfred, he was skeptical at first. But after reading the script, he realised that this Alfred is a surrogate father, mentor and emotional backbone for Bruce Wayne. Michael approached the role with the same level of dedication as he did his Oscar-winning turns in “The Cider House Rules” and “Hannah and her Sister.” He even invented a clever backstory for Alfred, imagining him as a former SAS officer who was wounded in the war – he can’t go back into combat so he takes over dining duties for the sergeants – one of whom is Bruce’s father. This portrayal of Alfred certainly lived up to the hype and was an integral part of The Dark Knight trilogy.

In 2006, Michael joined the cast of sci-fi drama “Children of Men” and also teamed up again with Christopher Nolan to play a supporting role in “The Prestige”.

Michael cut a poignant figure in 2008’s “Is Anybody There” in which he played a retired magician crumbling into the final stages of his life. As a result, Shakira found the film so unsettling that she banned their pregnant daughter, Natasha, from seeing it. One of the most harrowing scenes of the film depicts the onset of the character’s dementia. Michael has revealed that he based this on the death of his best friend, Dough Hayward, who suffered the same fate. That year he also took up the mantle of Alfred Pennyworth in the hit Batman sequel “The Dark Knight”.

2009 saw Michael take the lead role in “Harry Brown”, which saw him return to his native South London estate in the titular role.

"showed that he still had it"

Michael reunited with Christopher Nolan for the mind-bending “Inception” as Professor Stephen Miles, the father-in-law and mentor of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character.

He also leant his voice to animated films in 2011 as he voiced Lord Redbrick in “Gnomeo & Juliet” and Finn McMissile in “Cars 2”. The next year he reprised his role of Alfred again for the last Batman sequel “The Dark Knight Rises”. He filmed his scenes for the film at Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire.

Michael is again reuniting with Christopher Nolan in 2014’s sci-fi film “Interstellar” and is also cast in Matthew Vaughn’s upcoming film “Kingsman: The Secret Service”.

It was about time for Michael to look for a new home and he found a beautiful 200 year old water mill in a little village just outside Windsor, called Clewer. It had a 100 yards of frontage to the Thames, a small stream running through the middle of it and the actual house stood right on the main side-stream and millrace with the millwheel in it. It wasn’t in a good state and the garden was derelict, but this was exactly what Michael was looking for. He decided that garden would be his therapy. It was perfect. Michael later received a phone call from Dennis saying that he was sending a script for a film for him to star in with Elizabeth Taylor. It was called “Zee and Co” and was written by Edna O’ Brien. One night in 1971, Michael and his friend Paul were watching TV when an advert for Maxwell House coffee came on. On screen was the most beautiful girl Michael had ever seen. The effect she was having on Michael was extraordinary. Michael’s friend Paul asked him what was wrong and Michael replied, “that girl, she’s beautiful. I want to meet her”. The following evening, at a club, Michael bumped into Nigel Politzer, who worked for the company that made the commercial. Nigel told Michael that the girl’s name was Shakira Baksh and that she lived somewhere in Fulham Road. He agreed to phone Shakira for Michael the following morning.

In January 1973, Michael and Shakira decided to get married in Las Vegas. They decided that they didn’t want a big fuss and these chose the romantically named “Little Chapel on the Green”. Later that year, in July, Shakira gave birth to a baby girl of 6lb and 12 oz, whom they called Natasha.

It’s now 1976 and Michael’s next movie was in England on location in a place called Muapledurham. The film was called “The Eagle Has Landed” and was the story of a band of German commandos who were sent to England during the war to assassinate Winston Churchill. One of Michael’s dreams had been to open a restaurant and one day he was introduced to Peter Langan, who already owned a restaurant. He told Michael to come and see him when he was ready. When Peter next saw Michael he told him that he had taken on a lease of a very well known restaurant called Coq D’or. Peter offered Michael a third share of the action for £25,000. Michael accepted. On a quiet Monday night, Langan’s Brasserie opened to just a few friends and passers-by, but it didn’t take long for it to become the place to be seen.

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Michael Caine

• Born March 14 , 1933 · Rotherhithe, London, England, UK
• Birth name Maurice Joseph Micklewhite
• Height 6′ 2″ (1.88 m)
• Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine , and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954) . In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall". Zulu (1964) , the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966) , Funeral in Berlin (1966) , Play Dirty (1969) , Battle of Britain (1969) , Too Late the Hero (1970) , The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971) , he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command. However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976) . Educating Rita (1983) , Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998) , The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) , and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan 's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006) , Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014) . He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón 's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011) . As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep ). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema. Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Elizabeth Ercy , Nancy Sinatra , Natalie Wood , Candice Bergen , Bianca Jagger , Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John . In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Pedro Borges
• Spouses Shakira Caine (January 8, 1973 - present) (1 child) Patricia Haines (April 3, 1954 - 1958) (divorced, 1 child)
• Children Dominique Natasha Caine
• Parents Ellen Frances Marie Burchell Maurice Joseph Micklewhite
• Relatives Stanley Caine (Sibling) David Burchell (Sibling) Taylor Michael Caine Hall (Grandchild) Miles Michael Caine Hall (Grandchild)
• His spectacles (rare for 1960s leading actors)
• His cockney accent
• Often plays mentors and father figures to younger characters in films
• Tall, lean frame
• Frequently works with director Christopher Nolan
• For more than forty years, Caine's mother, Ellen Maria Burchell, paid periodic visits to a "cousin" in a mental hospital. When she died in 1989, Caine learned that the cousin was really his elder brother, David.
• He owns seven restaurants: six in London, one in Miami.
• Once said that he knew he had made it as an actor when he started getting scripts to read that no longer had coffee stains already on them (meaning that he was the first choice for that role).
• He legally changed his name to Michael Caine in 2016. He said in an interview that he'd had too many problems travelling with a passport that didn't match his stage name.
• Educating Rita (1983) is his favourite film of his own, and the performance he's the most proud of.
• [in 1967] I've never been out with a married woman, never. I respect others' properties.
• My name is Michael Caine.
• [on Jaws: The Revenge (1987) ] I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.
• I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.
• I used to get the girl; now I get the part. In The Quiet American (2002) you may have noticed I got the part and the girl. It's a milestone for me, because it's the last time I'm going to get the girl. I'm sure of it, now I'm nearly seventy.
• Jaws: The Revenge (1987) - $1,500,000
• The Hand (1981) - $1,000,000
• Hurry Sundown (1967) - $20,000 /week
• Gambit (1967) - $250,000
• Zulu (1964) - £4,000

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Sir michael caine, british film icon.

Listen to this achiever on What It Takes

What It Takes is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice.

I went into repertory for nine years and learned how to be an actor in order to become the best possible actor I could become. Not the best possible actor, because there’ll always be, whatever you do, people who are better or worse at what you do.

The actor the world knows as Michael Caine was born Maurice Micklewhite, Jr. in London, England.  His father worked as a porter in the fish market; his mother was a cook and cleaning woman.  Young Maurice lived with his parents and a younger brother in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south side of the River Thames.  The Micklewhites were a close and loving family but material comforts were few; the cramped old buildings where working-class families like the Micklewhites lived in the 1930s lacked indoor plumbing, and opportunities for advancement in pre-war Britain were remote.  Early in Maurice’s life, the discomforts of poverty were joined by the terrors of war.  Young Maurice was six years old when Britain entered World War II. The elder Micklewhite was immediately called up for military service and Maurice would not see his father again for six years.

Without their father, Maurice and his three-year-old brother were forced to assume responsibility for supporting their mother emotionally through trying times.  When the Germans began the nightly bombing of London, Maurice was sent to live with another family away from the city.  Maurice and another boy were grossly neglected by the host family, who left town for days at a time, leaving the boys locked in a cupboard until they returned.  When Mrs. Micklewhite discovered the condition her son was being kept in, she relocated him to another shelter, but the experience left Maurice profoundly claustrophobic.

With the end of the war, the Micklewhites were reunited.  Because their old home had been severely damaged in the bombing, the family moved into new prefabricated housing in the South London neighborhood known as Elephant and Castle.  The new housing was regarded as substandard by middle-class Britons, but to the Micklewhites, it was a step up, with indoor plumbing and a small garden.  Their home remained a haven, but the streets outside were dangerous, with young men forming rival gangs for protection.

Maurice found safety at the neighborhood youth club. He originally joined to play basketball but was soon drawn to the club’s drama classes and the girls who gathered there.  Once inside, he fell in love with acting and the theater.

He acted in plays at the youth club and began to dream of a career in the theater.  Film actors like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart further stimulated his imagination, and, upon leaving grammar school at age 16, Maurice went to work as a file clerk and messenger for film companies around London. He did not imagine that a working-class boy from “the Elephant” could ever become a film star himself, but he hoped to find some way to pursue an acting career and make a life in the theater.

Real life intervened violently when he was called up for national service at age 19 and sent to Korea, where the United Kingdom had joined the United States and other allied forces in a seemingly interminable conflict.  The young infantryman resigned himself to certain death when his unit encountered massively superior Chinese Communist forces.  Surviving this experience, Maurice resolved to make the most of his life in the years ahead.

Returning to England and civilian life, he set out to pursue his dreams of the theater.  Jaundiced and emaciated from malaria contracted in Korea, with no theater training and an unmistakable cockney accent, he knew he faced formidable obstacles, but Maurice decided he would set aside any ambition other than becoming the best actor he could possibly be. He answered an ad for an assistant stage manager at the Westminster Repertory Company in Horsham, Sussex, and was soon playing small walk-on roles.

Then, as now, provincial repertory theaters were the great training ground of British actors, and Maurice Micklewhite, now acting under the name Michael White, learned his craft gradually. From Horsham, he moved to the Lowestoft Repertory Company in Suffolk, where he met his first wife, Patricia Haines. They married in 1955 and would have one daughter, Dominique.

In repertory, the journeyman actor played a variety of roles and learned to assume the accents of all regions and classes in the United Kingdom. The British actors’ union, Equity, already had a Michael White on its rolls, so when his agent asked him to provide a new name in a hurry, he grabbed the name Caine from a nearby marquee on a movie theater showing the film The Caine Mutiny .  Maurice Micklewhite was now Michael Caine.

For nearly ten years, Caine labored in provincial repertory and in small roles — sometimes uncredited — on film and television.  His marriage to Patricia Haines ended, and at age 30, Michael Caine was still struggling, while contemporaries like Sean Connery, Albert Finney, and Peter O’Toole were starring on the West End and in Hollywood films.

Caine had played the role of a soldier in the 1956 film A Hill in Korea , and one of the stars of that film, Stanley Baker, introduced him to Cy Endfield, the American director of Baker’s new film, Zulu .  After seeing the actor in a play on the West End, Endfield cast Caine against type as an upper-class officer in the taut drama of a besieged British Army unit in 19th-century South Africa.  Zulu was one of the international hits of 1964, and Michael Caine’s performance did not go unnoticed.  Harry Saltzman, producer of the popular James Bond films, signed Caine to play an unconventional hero in the espionage film The Ipcress File . Unlike the tuxedo-clad superman of the Bond films, Caine’s Harry Palmer character was a spy-as-everyman, with a cockney accent, a beige raincoat and a pair of eyeglasses with thick dark frames.  Studio executives in Hollywood were skeptical that the public would accept such a mundane hero, but British filmgoers responded easily to Caine’s unpretentious charm, and working-class Londoners, in particular, were thrilled to hear their own voice coming from the screen in the role of a hero, rather than that of a servant or comedian.

Michael Caine was now a star in Britain, but even greater fame was soon to come. The postwar flowering of British popular culture had captured the imagination of a public far beyond the British Isles.  British playwrights like John Osborne and Harold Pinter, musicians like the Beatles, and actors like Connery, O’Toole, and Finney had helped create a worldwide interest in British drama, music, film, and fashion. Michael Caine was set to ride the crest of this wave.

Caine’s former flatmate, actor Terence Stamp, had enjoyed good reviews in the play Alfie on Broadway but declined an offer to appear in the film version, and the producer gave the role to Caine.  The role of Alfie, an amoral cockney womanizer, was a good fit for Caine, who made it entirely his own.  Addressing the camera directly in a series of disarmingly blunt observations on male-female relations, Caine the actor managed to charm the audience even as they were appalled by the behavior of Alfie the character.  The film was a massive international success. Caine, now a star on both sides of the Atlantic, was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor.

The American film star Shirley MacLaine invited him to Hollywood to appear with her in the unconventional thriller Gambit , and Michael Caine received his first taste of life in Hollywood, meeting screen heroes like John Wayne and Cary Grant.  Back in Britain, Caine reprised his role as Harry Palmer in the films A Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain . Caine’s career was riding high, with memorable leading roles in the crime caper movie The Italian Job and the Newcastle-set gangster film Get Carter . Caine worked with an old idol, stage and screen legend Laurence Olivier in the intimate thriller Sleuth (1972), with Caine displaying his versatility through a series of startling plot twists.

Caine enjoyed a notably lively bachelor life in the discotheques of London until he met actress and model Shakira Baksh.  He claims he fell in love with her when he saw her in a coffee commercial on television. Baksh, born in Guyana to a family with roots in Kashmir, was not initially interested in meeting Caine, and he claims he called her for ten days in a row before she agreed to go on a date with him.  Once they met in person, a romance developed quickly and they were married in 1973. Caine was reunited with an old acquaintance from London theater days, Sean Connery, in the 1975 adventure spectacle The Man Who Would Be King , directed by Hollywood legend John Huston. Shakira Caine played the part of a Himalayan princess in the film.

Over the years, Caine appeared as military men in a number of big-budget World War II films, including The Battle of Britain , The Eagle Has Landed and A Bridge Too Far .  In the late 1970s, new British tax laws called for an 82-percent marginal tax rate on higher incomes.  Michael and Shakira Caine moved to California, making their home for the next ten years in Beverly Hills, where they raised their daughter, Natasha.

Caine’s second Hollywood effort, The Swarm , was a failure, despite an all-star American cast, but Caine took the advice of fellow Briton James Mason, who enjoyed a lucrative film career long after his leading-man days were over.  Mason advised him to keep working and not to stay off the screen too long, waiting for the right role, but to take the best role on offer.  Caine appeared in a number of undistinguished American films in this period, including Beyond the Poseidon Adventure , but he enjoyed some success in the Neil Simon comedy California Suite and the thrillers Dressed to Kill  and Deathtrap .

A change of government — and tax laws — brought Caine back to Britain in the ‘80s, and he inaugurated a career resurgence with the comedy Educating Rita and the underworld story Mona Lisa . An uncharacteristic role as a guilt-ridden philandering husband in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) won Caine renewed critical acclaim and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  He did not attend the Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles, as he was filming Jaws: the Revenge in the Bahamas.  Caine achieved unexpected success and won a new generation of fans with his appearance as Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol in 1992. He had considered retiring from the screen when his friend Jack Nicholson lured him back for the 1996 film Blood and Wine .

Caine took on one of the best roles of his career, the kindly doctor in Depression-era New England, in the 1999 film of John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules .  He received glowing reviews for the role and was awarded his second Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. In the year 2000, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to British film. In memory of his father, he accepted the honor as Sir Maurice Micklewhite, although the public continued to recognize him as Sir Michael Caine.

Although he was nominated again for his performance in the 2002 film version of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American , Sir Michael planned to retire from the screen for a second time. An unexpected third act in his career began when director Christopher Nolan offered him the role of the butler Alfred in Batman Begins . Nolan’s conception of the familiar characters of the Batman franchise greatly enlarged the role of Alfred. In Nolan’s vision, Alfred is a family retainer who has virtually raised the orphaned Bruce Wayne from childhood, preparing him to become Batman. The 2005 film was a worldwide blockbuster, and Caine’s performance was recognized as an essential part of the film’s success. Caine reprised the role of Alfred in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises . He worked with director Nolan again in the films Inception and Interstellar . In 2009, Caine gave one of the most intense performances of his career in Harry Brown , playing a retired Royal Marine who takes the law into his own hands to bring justice to his deteriorating inner-city neighborhood.

Michael Caine has published a book-length essay on Acting in Film ; two books of trivia, Not Many People Know That  and Not Many People Know This Either ; and three volumes of memoirs, What’s It All About? , The Elephant to Hollywood , and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off .  He and his wife, Shakira, remain together, after more than 45 years of marriage, and have homes in London and in Leatherhead, Surrey.

In more than 150 feature films, Michael Caine has brought intelligence and humanity to roles as varied as the hunted gangster in Get Carter ; an alcoholic teacher in Educating Rita ; men at war in The Battle of Britain and A Bridge Too Far ; a soldier of fortune in The Man Who Would Be King ; and the loyal butler Alfred in The Dark Knight trilogy.

Born in London to working-class parents, he served in the Korean War and struggled for a decade to build his career as an actor before first winning notice in the historical drama Zulu and the spy thriller The Ipcress File . In 1966, his performance as the cockney playboy Alfie rocketed him to international stardom.

Michael Caine has been nominated for an Oscar in five consecutive decades, winning for his roles as a guilt-ridden philandering husband in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and as a kindly doctor in The Cider House Rules (1999). His films have made over $7.8 billion worldwide, placing him among the top-grossing film stars of all time. In 2000, he was knighted by HM Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to world cinema.

You’ve said that you began your career without any expectations of becoming a star. Why was that?

Michael Caine: I was in Korea, in the war in Korea, and there’s an incubation period for malaria, and I came home, and then I collapsed with malaria.  And so there I was, I’m very, very thin — I lost a lot of weight — a slightly yellow complexion and the thick cockney accent, and I knew I would never be rich or famous. You absolutely knew that.

So I went into repertory for nine years and learned how to be an actor in order to become the best possible actor I could become.  Not the best possible actor, because there’ll always be, whatever you do, people who are better or worse at what you do.  I just started to be the best possible actor I could be, and that was the end of that.

I think it just came from knowing that I was never going to be like Laurence Olivier or people like that, or John Gielgud — great theater actors — or big movie stars like Cary Grant and Robert Taylor, and John Mills in England, and people like that.  But I just decided to make myself the best that I could possibly make myself without any reference to anyone else.

Apart from the damage to your health, what impact do you think your service in the Korean War had on you?

Michael Caine: To me, I was always disgusted by war. It’s always started by men who are too old to go; that’s the start.  And then they send the young men, who are too stupid to know what they’re getting into, like me.  And then you wind up in Korea with the American Marines, which is not a very good idea.  And no, I mean it’s the most terrifying ordeal that you can think of, and you have to do things that you would never think of doing.  But there was one great advantage to me from the war, which was that…

Michael Caine: We got into a situation, on a patrol, where we were surrounded by Chinese, and we knew we were going to die, but what you worry about when you get into that situation — are you going to be a coward, are you going to be yellow and run, you know, and there were only four of us, a little tiny patrol.  And we all said, “Well, we’re going to make this as expensive as we possibly can, our deaths.” And we were going to do that.  And the officer said, “Let’s go towards their lines and go right round.”  So we went back. They were waiting for us to go back to our lines, and then we went back to the Chinese line and went right the way around them and back, and so we survived it; we didn’t have to do that. But I came out of it knowing that I wasn’t a coward, and I’ve known that for the rest of my life.  So for all the things I hated about Korea and the things I hate about war, which I do hate, I came out of it with one advantage, which fostered one of my pet phrases, which is “Use the difficulty,” and that’s how I used that difficulty.

You’ve described acting as “not acting,” or as “listening and reacting.” What do you mean?

When I was a young actor in repertory, I came — very young — and I came on rehearsals, and I was playing a drunk — a drunken man. And I came on, and then the producer said, “Just a minute, Michael, what are you doing?” I said, “I’m drunk in this scene.” He said, “I know you’re drunk in this scene. What are you doing?” I said, “I’m playing a drunk.” He said, “No, you’re not. You’re playing an actor.”

I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “A drunk is a man who is trying to speak properly and walk straight. You’re an actor who is trying to speak in a mumbled voice and walk crooked.” And there, he described movie acting to me in one sentence — and the same thing he did when I had a crying scene. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m crying. Blah, blah, blah.” And he said, “No. When a man cries, it’s the last thing he wants to do.”

He said, “He will do anything but cry. He will stop himself crying no matter how tragic it is. And he would do everything, and only when he’s completely defeated emotionally will he start to cry properly.” He said, “He will do anything but cry — a real man.” He said, “You are an actor who is trying to cry.” And he described, again, movie acting. That’s a complete description of movie acting.

The hardest thing that I’ve had to do on camera was in Harry Brown , crying. And I had to do that, and I did that. If you saw a movie I did called Harry Brown , you’d see me cry, and you’d see the man doing that, doing everything but cry and then having to break down because he was so unhappy.

You’ve had some extraordinary luck in your career.  You were in a very interesting place in a very interesting time, the British theater and film scene in the late ‘50s and the ‘60s.  So many of the people you knew and worked with in the early days went on to great careers, too.

Michael Caine: What it was, in those days, everybody I knew was not famous, and nobody I knew didn’t become famous.  It’s like — I had this friend called David Baron, who was an actor.  And he said to me, he said, “I’m going to write a play, and you’re going to be in it.”  I said, “All right, David,” you know.

He said, “I’m fed up with this. I’m going to be a playwright,” he said.  But he said, “David Baron’s not my real name. I’m going to write under my real name.”  I said, “What’s your real name, David?”  He said, “Harold Pinter.” I was in his first play, at the Royal Court, called The Room.  And you meet people like that.

And the other one, the other actor I was with was John Osborne.  He said, “I’m going to write a play,” and he said, “I’ve nearly finished it.”  I said, “What’s it called?”  He said, “ Look Back in Anger. ”  I went, “Oh, great.  Lovely.” You know.  It was time after time that you met people, that they just — everyone I knew.  Peter O’Toole, he was in the play; he became a movie star.  I was his understudy.  He became a massive star, you know.  Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, they all became stars, and these were guys I knew.  Terence Stamp, he became a star.  I shared a flat with him.  So it was one of those eras like that, where everybody became someone.

I came along at a time when social life in England was changing, and people were starting to write about working-class people. Movies were starting to be made about them. My first job, when I came to London, I was an understudy for Peter O’Toole, who was in a play, and he became a star in the play — a fabulous actor. And he became the star in this play called The Long and the Short and the Tall , which is the first British play ever written about private soldiers in the British Army. Like, Bill Naughton wrote Alfie about an ordinary Englishman.  John Osborne wrote Look Back in Anger . And they were the first playwrights to write about working-class people in Britain, I promise you.

Society changed when people wrote films about working-class people and working-class people went to see them.  Because when I was a young man, when I went to see a war film, I went to see American films because American films — From Here to Eternity and those, The Naked and the Dead — were all about private soldiers.  English war films were all about officers, you know.  I’d been a soldier; I didn’t want to see a picture about officers.

We know your original name was Maurice Micklewhite.  How did you become Michael Caine?

Michael Caine: I came out of a repertory theater in the country, and I came to London, and I didn’t have a telephone, and there was a club called the Artsiana Club — where all the out-of-work actors used to be in the coffee bar in the basement — and it was at Leicester Square, which is like Broadway in New York, all the big cinemas and theaters.

And every night, I used to go and phone my agent — to see if there was a job — at six o’clock, in a phone booth on Leicester Square.  And because my name was Micklewhite, I called myself — I didn’t want to use that name — in repertory, I was called Michael White.  And then, one night, I got a job, and the woman said — my agent, Josephine, said to me, she said, “You’ve got to change your name because you’ve got to join Equity, the trade union.”

I said, “Yes.” She said, “There is another Michael White in the trade union.” So she said, “You can call yourself ‘Michael,’ but you can’t call yourself ‘White’.”  She said, “And I need a name now because I’ve got to call the producer, and I’ve got to say your name and tell him who’s going to play the part.”  So she said, “Give me a surname.”  So I look around the cinemas, and one of my favorite actors is Humphrey Bogart. And on the Odeon in Leicester Square, at that time, was The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart.  And I said, “Michael Caine.” She said, “Okay, how do you spell it?”  I said C-A-I-N-E, that’s it.  If I had gone to the Leicester Square Theater, I’d have been “Michael 101 Dalmatians.”

What do you think it was that got you out of the world you were in and brought you to Hollywood and made you one of the most famous people in the world?

Michael Caine: It was just keeping going at what I did.  I tried to make myself better every day and eventually, someone noticed it. Namely, Cy Endfield, who was the director of Zulu. He saw me in a play, my first play in the West End, called Next Time I’ll Sing To You. And I played a cockney in that, and he wanted to cast me as a cockney. It was about the military, and I was going to be a cockney corporal.

I went for the audition, and I didn’t have a phone, and he said, “I’m sorry, Michael. We’ve cast the corporal, you know, but I couldn’t call you. You don’t have a phone.”  I said, “No, I don’t have a phone.”  I said it was okay because I’d been turned down for a lot of parts.  I was in a very long bar at the Prince of Wales Theatre in West End in London — a very long bar — and I always regard that long bar as the secret of my success because if it had been shorter, I wouldn’t be here.

If the bar had been shorter, my film career might not have happened because I had got to the door, I was just opening it, and Cy Endfield said, “Come back here,” he said. I was cast as a cockney corporal, and he looked at me, and I was tall, skinny, blonde. He said, “You look more like an officer to me.” He said, “You don’t look like a corporal.” A corporal would be sort of tougher looking. He says, “Can you do a posh accent?” And I said, “Yeah.”  I said, “I’ve been in repertory for nine years. I’ve played hundreds of posh people.” And he cast me as the officer in Zulu , which started my career. And the thing about that was — thinking in terms of the British class system — if he had been an Englishman, that director, even if he’d been a left-wing communist, he would not have cast me as an officer, I promise you.

For younger people who are listening and admire all that you’ve done, you’ve often said, “Watch for opportunities.”  But sometimes, it’s hard to know what’s an opportunity. 

Michael Caine: Sometimes you don’t know when something good is happening.  For instance, I played a very posh officer in Zulu.  Now, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life playing posh officers, you know.  I don’t have a naturally posh accent, and I’m not a naturally posh officer.  It was a performance.  But it brought me all the career that I ever had.  And I’ve never played a person like that again since, someone as posh as that.  I played a lot of posh people, but it was no indication of what I was going to do as an actor, Zulu.  But it brought me to attention.

I was having dinner. I was sharing a flat with an actor there called Terence Stamp, and we were having dinner at a restaurant. And Harry Saltzman, one of the producers of the Bond films, is making the film The Ipcress File, and he’d bought the novel from Len Deighton.  And he was in this restaurant, and he sent me a message, saying, “At the end of your meal, would you please have a coffee with me?”

He was with his wife and kids, and I went over, and he gave me Ipcress File.  He’d just seen Zulu that night.  Now Ipcress File was a sort of cockney working-class spy.  He had just seen Zulu, with a posh, very posh officer, absolutely nothing to do with the other treatment.

I asked him about that.  I said, “Well, you’ve just seen Zulu; now you want me to play the…”  He said, “It’s about screen presence, Michael.  Once you see the presence, once you’re on screen, you’ve either got screen presence or you haven’t.  And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”  I didn’t know I had it. I didn’t know what it was, but it seemed that I had it.

Ipcress File made me famous in England.  Alfie made me famous in America because I got nominated for an Academy Award the first time, and it was the first movie — they made a lot of British movies, but they never got a release in America.  Alfie got released in America, a general release.

And what the difference was between the stars of my generation — like Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Albert Finney — is we all became stars in America.  Before that, British movie stars were stars in Britain, not in America.  Lots of British actors went to America and became stars.  Cary Grant did it, you know. Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were both English.

You mentioned Sean Connery. You met him early on, didn’t you?

Michael Caine: Sean Connery — what happened with Sean, how Sean got into show business — he was a “Mr.” — I think he was “Mr. Edinburgh.”  He was a big weightlifter.  And they were doing South Pacific, and there’s a song in it called “There Is Nothing Like a Dame,” sung by all these sailors, you know, big robust sailors.  And they only had small chorus boys, and it didn’t look right, them singing this song, “There Is Nothing Like a Dame.”

So they went out and looked for great big, masculine men, and of course, they went to weightlifting places.  And they found Sean, and Sean was in the chorus of South Pacific.  And they opened on a Thursday, and the Saturday night, there was a party to which I took two girls.  And he came after the show, late, about eleven o’clock.  And he walked in, and he saw me with two girls.  And he walked straight over to me and introduced himself and took one of the girls.  So that’s how I met Sean Connery.

The first big famous person I ever met was John Wayne, and he was exactly like I expected him to be. I was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and I was there on my own because I was there to make a movie called Gambit with Shirley MacLaine, but she went over the schedule on what she was doing and didn’t turn up. And so nobody knew me in Hollywood and knew I was there except Shirley MacLaine and the producers and directors of the movie.

They left me in the hotel, and I used to sit in the lobby to look for famous people, film stars.  And John Wayne came in one day and signed into the hotel.  And then he saw me sitting there, and he said, “What’s your name, kid?” I said, “Michael Caine.” He said, “You in that movie Alfie ?”  I said, “Yeah.”  He said, “You’re going to be a big star, kid.”  I said, “Well, thank you, Mr. Wayne.”

He said, “But let me give you some advice.” I said, “What?”  He said, “Talk slow. Talk slow and don’t say too much.”  I said, “Thank you, sir, thank you very much.”  He said — and I had on suede shoes — and he said to me, “And never wear suede shoes.”  I said, “What?” He said, “Never wear suede shoes.”  I said, “Why not?”  He said, “Because remember, I just told you, you’re going to be famous.”  He said, “And you’ll be in the toilet taking a pee, and the guy next to you is going to go ‘Michael Caine!’ — and he’s going to pee all over your shoes, so never wear suede shoes.”

Did you listen to his advice?

Michael Caine: Oh yeah, I threw the suede shoes away. Oh, well. He said, “Talk slow; don’t say too much.” I then made 20 pictures where I never stopped talking very quickly.  Because he was a cowboy, you see, and cowboys don’t say too much, do they? Because they fall off, otherwise, if they keep talking.

I’ll tell you another thing with cowboys. Richard Widmark told me — I was talking to him; he said, “What’d you say?” He said, “Talk in this ear.”  He said, “I’m a bit deaf in that one.”  I said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Why is that?”  He said, “Well, playing all those cowboy parts.” He said, “Someone’s always shooting a bloody gun, and it goes, and it’s always been in my left ear.” And he said, “You go deaf.”  He said, “All actors who play cowboys in America are deaf in one ear.”  I said, “What?”

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