Sir Michael Caine, CBE (/keɪn/; born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr., 14 March 1933) is an English actor, producer and author. He has appeared in more than 130 films in a career spanning 70 years and is considered a British film icon.[2] Known for his cockney accent, Caine was born in South London.[3]
A blue plaque erected in 2003 marks Caine's birthplace at St Olave's Hospital.
Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr. on 14 March 1933 in St Olave's Hospital in Rotherhithe, London.[6][7][8] His father, Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Sr. (20 February 1899, St Olave, Bermondsey, London –1956, Lambeth, London), was a fish market porter of English and Irish heritage, while his English mother, Ellen Frances Marie Burchell (1900, Southwick, London –1989, London), was a cook and charwoman.[9][10] He was brought up in his mother's Protestant religion.[11]
The prefabs, as they were known, were intended to be temporary homes while London was reconstructed, but we ended up living there for eighteen years and for us, after a cramped flat with an outside toilet, it was luxury.[15]
From 28 April 1952, when he was called up to do his national service until 1954, he served in the British Army's Royal Fusiliers, first at the BAOR HQ in Iserlohn, Germany, and then on active service during the Korean War. He had gone into Korea feeling sympathetic to communism, coming as he did from a poor family, but the experience left him permanently repelled.[18] He experienced a situation where he thought he was going to die, the memory of which stayed with him and formed his character; he later said, "The rest of my life I have lived every bloody moment from the moment I wake up until the time I go to sleep."[19] He detailed the incident in his autobiography, The Elephant to Hollywood.[20][21][22]
Caine would like to see the return of national service to help combat youth violence, stating: "I'm just saying, put them in the Army for six months. You're there to learn how to defend your country. You belong to the country. Then, when you come out, you have a sense of belonging, rather than a sense of violence."[23]
Caine began his acting career at the age of 20 in Horsham, Sussex, when he responded to an advertisement in The Stage for an assistant stage manager who would also perform small walk-on parts for the Horsham-based Westminster Repertory Company who were performing at the Carfax Electric Theatre.[24] Adopting the stage name "Michael White", in July 1953 he was cast as the drunkard Hindley in the Company's production of Wuthering Heights.[25][26] He moved to the Lowestoft Repertory Company in Suffolk for a year when he was 21. It was here that he met his first wife.[27] He has described the first nine years of his career as "really, really brutal"[28] as well as "more like purgatory than paradise".[12] Whilst in Lowestoft rep at the Arcadia Theatre (with Jackson Stanley's 'Standard Players') he appeared in nine plays.
When his career took him to London in 1954 after his provincial apprenticeship, his agent informed him that there was already a Michael White performing as an actor in London and that he had to come up with a new name immediately.[25] Speaking to his agent from a telephone booth in Leicester Square, London, he looked around for inspiration, noted that The Caine Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon Cinema in 1954, and decided to change his name to "Michael Caine".[25] He joked on television in 1987 that, had a tree partly been blocking his view a few feet to the left, he might have been called "Michael Mutiny". (Humphrey Bogart was his "screen idol" and he would later play the part originally intended for Bogart in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King.[29]) He also later joked in interviews that had he looked the other way, he would have ended up as "Michael One Hundred and One Dalmatians".[30] Caine moved in with another rising cockney actor, Terence Stamp, and began hanging out with him and Peter O'Toole in the London party scene after he had become O'Toole's understudy in Lindsay Anderson's West End staging of Willis Hall's The Long and the Short and the Tall in 1959.[25] Caine took over the role when O'Toole left to make Lawrence of Arabia and went on to a four-month tour of the UK and Ireland.[25]
Caine continued to appear on television, in serials The Golden Girl and No Wreath for the General, but was then cast in the play The Compartment, written by Johnny Speight, a two-hander also starring Frank Finlay. This was followed by main roles in other plays including the character Tosh in Somewhere for the Night, a Sunday-Night Play written by Bill Naughton televised on Sunday 3 December 1961, another two-hander by Johnny Speight, The Playmates, and two editions of BBC plays strand First Night, Funny Noises with Their Mouths and The Way with Reggie (both 1963). He also acted in radio plays, including Bill Naughton's Looking for Frankie on the BBC Home Service (1963) and Ping Pong on the BBC Third Programme (1964).
A big break came for Caine when he was cast as Meff in James Saunders' Cockney comedy Next Time I'll Sing To You, when this play was presented at the New Arts Theatre in London on 23 January 1963.[31] Scenes from the play's performance were featured in the April 1963 issue of Theatre World magazine.[32]
When this play moved to the Criterion in Piccadilly with Michael Codron directing, he was visited backstage by Stanley Baker, one of the four stars in Caine's first film, A Hill in Korea, who told him about the part of a Cockney private in his upcoming film Zulu, a film Baker was producing and starring in. Baker told Caine to meet the director, Cy Endfield, who informed him that he already had given the part to James Booth, a fellow Cockney who was Caine's friend, because he "looked more Cockney" than Caine did. Endfield then told the 6'2" Caine that he did not look like a Cockney but like an officer, and offered him a screen test for the role of a snobbish, upper class officer after Caine assured him that he could do a posh accent. Caine believes Endfield offered him, a Cockney, the role of an aristocrat because, being American, he did not have the endemic British class-prejudice. Though he tested poorly, Endfield gave him the part that would make him a film star.[33]
Location shooting for Zulu took place in Natal, South Africa, for 14 weeks in 1963.[34][35][36] According to his 2011 autobiography The Elephant to Hollywood, Caine had been signed to a seven-year contract by Joseph E. Levine, whose Embassy Films was distributing Zulu. After the return of the cast to England and the completion of the film, Levine released him from the contract, telling him, "I know you're not, but you gotta face the fact that you look like a queer on screen." Levine gave his contract to his Zulu co-star James Booth.[37]
Caine in Helsinki, 1967
Subsequently, Caine's agent got him cast in the BBC production Hamlet at Elsinore (1964) as Horatio, in support of Christopher Plummer's Hamlet. Horatio was the only classical role which Caine, who had never received dramatic training, would ever play. Caine wrote, "...I decided that if my on-screen appearance was going to be an issue, then I would use it to bring out all Horatio's ambiguous sexuality."[38]
Caine starred in the 1969 comedy caper filmThe Italian Job as Charlie Croker, the leader of a cockney criminal gang released from prison with the intention of doing a "big job" in Italy to steal gold bullion from an armoured security truck. One of the most celebrated roles of his career, in a 2002 poll his line "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" was voted the second funniest line in film (after “He's not the Messiah..” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian),[40] and favourite one-liner in a 2003 poll of 1,000 film fans.[41] One of the most discussed end scenes in film, what happened to the coachload of gold teetering over the edge of a cliff has been debated in the decades since the film was released.[42][43]
Michael Caine in the trailer for Get Carter (1971)
After working on The Italian Job with Noël Coward, and a solid role as RAF fighter pilot squadron leader Canfield in the all-star cast of Battle of Britain (both 1969), Caine played the lead in Get Carter (1971), a British gangster film. Caine was busy with successes including Sleuth (1972) opposite Laurence Olivier, and John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975) co-starring Sean Connery which received widespread acclaim.[44]The Times applauded the "lovely double act of Caine and Connery, clowning to their doom", while Huston paid tribute to Caine's improvisation as an actor: "Michael is one of the most intelligent men among the artists I've known. I don't particularly care to throw the ball to an actor and let him improvise, but with Michael it's different. I just let him get on with it."[44]
At the end of the 1970s Caine's choice of roles was frequently criticised—something to which he has referred with self-deprecating comments about taking parts strictly for the money. Caine then averaged two films a year, but these included such failures as the BAFTA-nominated The Magus (1968), the Academy Award-nominated The Swarm (1978), Ashanti (1979) (which he claimed were his worst three films), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), The Island (1980), The Hand (1981) and a reunion with his Sleuth co-star Laurence Olivier in The Jigsaw Man (1982).
In the 1990s, Caine found good parts harder to come by. He played the mysterious bartender Mike in Mr. Destiny in 1990. A high point came when he played Ebenezer Scrooge in the critically acclaimed The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992).[49][50] He played the beleaguered stage director Lloyd Fellowes in the film adaptation of Noises Off (1992). He also played a villain in the Steven Seagal film On Deadly Ground (1994). He was in two straight to video Harry Palmer sequels and a few television films. However, Caine's reputation as a pop icon was still intact, thanks to his roles in films such as The Italian Job and Get Carter. His performance in Little Voice (1998) was seen as something of a return to form, and won him a Golden Globe Award. Better parts followed, including The Cider House Rules (1999), for which he won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.[51]
Caine in London at the European premiere of The Dark Knight, July 2008
In the 2000s, Caine appeared in Miss Congeniality (2000), Last Orders (2001), The Quiet American (2002), for which he was Oscar-nominated, and others. Several of Caine's classic films have been remade, including The Italian Job, Get Carter, Alfie and Sleuth. In the 2007 remake of Sleuth, Caine took over the role Laurence Olivier played in the 1972 version and Jude Law played Caine's original role. Caine is one of the few actors to have played a starring role in two different versions of the same film. In an interview with CNN, Law spoke of his admiration for Caine: "I learned so much just from watching how he monitored his performance, and also how little he has to do. He's a master technician and sometimes he was doing stuff I didn't see, I couldn't register. I'd go back and watch it on the monitor, it was like 'Oh my God, the amount of variety he's put in there is breathtaking".[52]
It was reported by Empire magazine that Caine had said that Harry Brown (released on 13 November 2009) would be his last lead role.[53] Caine later clarified that he had no intention of retiring, stating that "You don’t retire in this business; the business retires you."[54][55]
Caine reprised his role as Alfred Pennyworth in the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, which was released in July 2012. He appeared in Christopher Nolan's 2014 science-fiction film, Interstellar as Dr. Brand.[56] Caine co-starred in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), by director Matthew Vaughn.[57] He also appeared in the lead role of retired composer Fred Ballinger in the 2015 comedy-drama film Youth, for which he and co-star Harvey Keitel received acclaim.[58]
"I kept my cockney accent in order to let other working class boys know that if I made it, they could do it too."
—Caine speaking to CNN's The Screening Room in 2007 on retaining his accent.[52]
Caine is regarded as a British cultural icon, with Mairi Mackay of CNN stating: "Michael Caine has been personifying British cool since the swinging sixties. He has brought some of British cinema's most iconic characters to life and introduced his very own laid-back cockney gangster into pop culture. He doggedly retained a regional accent at a time when the plummy tones of Received Pronunciation were considered obligatory. It is a sweet irony that his accent has become his calling card."[52] With his distinctive voice and manner of speaking, Caine is a popular subject for impersonators and mimics.[65] Most Caine impressions include the catchphrase "Not a lot of people know that."[52] The catchphrase emanates from Caine's habit of informing people of obscure "interesting facts" that he has collected.[66] Referring to Caine as being the "biggest mine of useless information", Peter Sellers initiated the catchphrase when he appeared on BBC1's Parkinson show on 28 October 1972 and said:
Not many people know that. This is my Michael Caine impression. You see, Mike's always quoting from the Guinness Book of Records. At the drop of a hat he'll trot one out. 'Did you know that it takes a man in a tweed suit five-and-a-half seconds to fall from the top of Big Ben to the ground?' Now there's not many people who know that![67]
Over the years Caine himself had parodied the phenomenon, both his catchphrase and his "interesting facts", and has imitated others' impressions of him.[68] In an interview with Michael Parkinson in 2007, Caine commented on the impersonations of his voice, "I can do it. 'Hello. My name is Michael Caine. Not many people know that.' I sound like a bloody moron. You know where they've got me now? On birthday cards. 'It's your birthday today. Not many people know that'. Now they've got me on Satellite navigation. It's me going, 'take the second turn on the right, and you'll wind up right in the shit.'"[68] In 1983, Caine used his "not a lot of people know that" phrase as a joke in the film Educating Rita.[52]
The comedy sketch show, Harry Enfield's Television Programme, included a series of sketches in which Paul Whitehouse played a character called Michael Paine; an amalgam of previous Michael Caine impressions, who in a reference to Caine's character Harry Palmer from The Ipcress File wears oversized, thick-rimmed glasses and a trench coat. He introduces himself with the line, "My name is Michael Paine, and I am a nosy neighbour" and in a spoof of the stakeout at the beginning of The Ipcress File, recounts to the camera the 'suspiciously' mundane behaviour of his neighbours, before saying, "Not a lot of people know that I know that".[69] Caine's Harry Palmer character (with the glasses, the girls, and disregard for authority) was among the many British pop cultural influences for Mike Myers’ Austin Powers films.[70] At Myers request, Caine himself starred in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), with his portrayal of Nigel Powers, father of Austin Powers, spoofing Harry Palmer.[70]
A parody of Caine appears in the animated series Ugly Americans, in the episode "The Dork Knight", which also parodies the film The Dark Knight. In the episode, Caine appears as himself, portrayed in the light of his Alfred Pennyworth interpretation, and constantly annoys the protagonists with endless anecdotes of his career.
The 2010 television series The Trip, starring Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, featured improvised scenes in which the two leads argue over who can do the better Michael Caine impression.[71] Among the lines they repeat in their attempts to outdo each other are, "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" and, "She was only sixteen"—from The Italian Job and Get Carter, respectively.[71] Coogan and Brydon later did their impressions from a balcony at the Royal Albert Hall during a celebration of Caine's work, only to be interrupted by the real Caine informing them that they were out of shape: "For me, it's a full-time job."[72]
Craig Ferguson ran segments on his show where he parodied Caine, usually while wearing a space suit.[73] In a 2010 interview with The Telegraph, Caine spoke of the impersonations and how everyone he meets quotes lines at him, to the point he quotes them quoting him.[69] When asked whether he ever tired of telling his anecdotes, Caine stated: "I enjoy making people laugh. The trick is to tell them against yourself. If you praise yourself your stories aren't funny."[69]
In 2018, Caine starred in British Airways’ pre-flight safety video, appearing with six other British celebrities including actresses Olivia Colman and Naomie Harris. Promoting the Flying Start children’s charity partnership between BA and Comic Relief, they are featured ‘auditioning’ in humorous sketches while also highlighting important safety messages.[74]
Caine lives in Leatherhead, Surrey, in a house with a movie theatre which cost him £100,000 to build.[75] He is patron to the Leatherhead Drama Festival.[76] He has also lived in North Stoke, Oxfordshire; Clewer, Berkshire; Lowestoft, Suffolk; and Chelsea Harbour, London. In addition, Caine owns an apartment at the Apogee in Miami Beach, Florida. He still keeps a small flat near where he grew up in London. Caine has published three volumes of memoirs, What's It All About? in 1992, The Elephant to Hollywood in 2010,[77] and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life in 2018.[78]
Caine was married to actress Patricia Haines from 1955 to 1962. They have a daughter, Dominique (who was named after the heroine of the novel The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand).[79] He dated Bianca Jagger in 1968. Caine has been married to actress and model Shakira Baksh since 8 January 1973. They met after Caine saw her appearing in a Maxwell House coffee commercial and a friend gave him her telephone number. He called her every day for ten days until she finally agreed to meet him.[80] They have a daughter, Natasha Haleema.[81][82] As a Christian married to a Muslim, he says "no questions or issues ever come up" and describes his wife's beliefs as "very benign".[83]
Proud of his working class roots, Caine has discussed the opportunities his film career gave him: "I got to play football with Pelé, for God's sake. And I danced with Bob Fosse."[69] He also became close friends with John Lennon, stating: "With John and I it was a case of bonding because we were both working class and we shared a sense of humour. We were pretending we weren't who people thought we were."[69] His closest friends include two James Bond actors, Sean Connery and the late Roger Moore.[69]
Caine quit his 80-a-day smoking habit in the early 1970s after a lecture by Tony Curtis.[84] He is a fan of cricket. This was alluded to by Gary Oldman, who acted with Caine in The Dark Knight Rises, when he talked about Caine's acting methods: "It's, 'Take one'. He got it. 'Take two', got it. 'Take three', got it. He's just on the money. [...] He doesn't fuck around because he wants to get back to cricket."[85]
Some time after his mother died, Caine and his younger brother, Stanley, learned they had an elder half-brother named David. He suffered from severe epilepsy and had been kept in Cane Hill Mental Hospital his entire life. Although their mother regularly visited her first son in the hospital, even her husband did not know the child existed. David died in 1992.[86]
Trivia books written by Caine include Not Many People Know That!, And Not Many People Know This Either!, Michael Caine's Moving Picture Show, and Not a Lot of People Know This is 1988. Proceeds from the books went to the National Playing Fields Association, a UK charity for which Caine served as Vice President, and which aims to protect and promote open spaces for sports and recreation in British cities and towns.[87]
In July 2016, Caine changed his name by deed poll to his long-time stage name in order to simplify security checks at airports. "[A security guard] would say, 'Hi Michael Caine,' and suddenly I'd be giving him a passport with a different name on it [Maurice Joseph Micklewhite]. I could stand there for an hour. So I changed my name."[88]
Caine has often been outspoken about his political views. He left the United Kingdom for the United States in the late-1970s, citing the income tax levied on top earners by the Labour government of James Callaghan, which then stood at 83%.[89] He lived in Beverly Hills during that time, but returned to the UK eight years later when taxes had been lowered by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher:
I realised that's not a socialist country, it's a communist country without a dictator, so I left and I was never going to come back. Maggie Thatcher came in and put the taxes back down and in the end, you know, you don't mind paying tax. What am I going to do? Not pay tax and drive around in a Rolls-Royce, with cripples begging on the street like you see in some countries?[90]
Following the launch of his film Harry Brown in 2009, Caine called for the reintroduction of national service in the UK to give young people "a sense of belonging, rather than a sense of violence".[91]
In 2009, Caine publicly criticised the Labour government of Gordon Brown for its new 50% income tax rate on top earners and threatened to return to the US if his taxes were increased further.[92] During the run up to the 2010 general election, Caine publicly endorsed the Conservative Party and appeared with then-party leader David Cameron for the launch of a civilian non-compulsory "National Service" for sixteen-year-olds, although Caine stated he had previously supported New Labour under the leadership of Tony Blair in 1997.[93] In July 2014, Caine was reported to have been a celebrity investor in a tax avoidance scheme called Liberty.[94]
Caine voted in favour of Brexit, stating he would rather be a "poor master than a rich servant".[95] He said he was a reluctant Leaver; "I don't know what to vote for. Both are scary. To me, you've now got in Europe a sort of government-by-proxy of everybody, who has now got carried away. Unless there is some extremely significant changes, we should get out."[96]
Caine is a fan of chill-out music, and released a compilation CD called Cained in 2007 on the UMTV record label.[97][98] He met Elton John and was discussing musical tastes, when Caine said that he had been creating chillout mix tapes as an amateur for years.[98][99] Also in music, Caine provided vocal samples for the Ska-pop band Madness for their 1984 hit "Michael Caine", as his daughter was a fan. He has sung in film roles as well, including Little Voice and for the 1992 musical film The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Caine has been nominated for an Oscar six times, winning his first Academy Award for the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters, and his second in 1999 for The Cider House Rules, in both cases as a supporting actor. His performance in Educating Rita in 1983 earned him the BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. Caine is one of only two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s (the other one being Jack Nicholson); Laurence Olivier was also nominated for an acting Academy Award in five different decades, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1978, as was Paul Newman (1950s, '60s, '80s, '90s and 2000s). Caine appeared in seven films that were ranked in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century.[100]
^Rotherhithe did not become part of the London Borough of Southwark until its creation in 1965. In 1933, it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey in the County of London (abolished 1965)
^Michael Caine, My Autobiography: The Elephant to Hollywood (Hodder & Stoughton, 2011), p. 16.
^Michael Caine, My Autobiography: The Elephant to Hollywood (Hodder & Stoughton, 2011), p. 28.
^Caine, Michael (26 October 2011). My Autobiography: The Elephant to Hollywood. London, England: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. p. 29.
^For an account of his evacuation and early school years, as sent to Jerry Pam—another Hackney Downs pupil whom he met in the 1950s, who was 6 years his senior, and who has become his publicist for "over 50 years"—see "MC" [Michael Caine], "A Message from Evacuee Maurice Micklewhite", The Clove's Lines: The Newsletter of The Clove Club: The Old Boys of Hackney Downs School 3.2 (March 2009): 16.
^William Hall (2004). The Biography of Sir Michael Caine;70 Not Out. John Blake. ISBN1-84454-019-7.
^Halliday, Jon; Chang, Jung (2 June 2005). Mao: The Unknown Story. New York City: Doubleday. p. 446.
^Interview with Mike Ostler by Roxanne Blakelock (15 October 2004) for the British Library Theatre Archive Project at www.bl.uk. Retrieved 4 January 2012
^The Actors – Sir Michael Caine Q&A, Indie London at www.indielondon.co.uk. Retrieved 4 January 2012
^Rob Carnevale, The Prestige – Michael Caine Interview, Indie London at www.indielondon.co.uk. Retrieved 4 January 2012
^The Two-Headed Spy, Turner Classic Movies Film Article at www.tcm.com. Retrieved 12 January 2012
^Zulu War 1879 Discussion and Reference Forum (A Small Victorian War in 1879) in www.1879zuluwar.com/t3518-films-of-michael-caine. Retrieved 14 January 2012
^Extract from The Elephant to Hollywood in Reader's Digest Australia at www.readersdigest.com.au. Retrieved 14 January 2012
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Michael Caine is an English actor who has appeared in over 130 films and has had multiple television appearances. Caine's acting career began in the 1950s, when he was cast in many small, often uncredited roles in British films. Caine gained recognition as one of the most famous actors of the 1960s through his breakthrough role in the film Zulu (1964). He then portrayed spy Harry Palmer in the films The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967). He also had starring roles in The Italian Job and Battle of Britain. His role in Sleuth (1972) led him to an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. Caine has won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the films Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and The Cider House Rules (1999). More recently, Caine has gained a new following through his collaborations with British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan in the Dark Knight Trilogy films, as well as Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014).
List of awards and nominations received by Michael Caine
Michael Caine has been nominated for an Oscar six times, winning his first Academy Award for the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters, and his second in 1999 for The Cider House Rules, in both cases as a supporting actor. His performance in Educating Rita in 1983 earned him the BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. Caine is one of only two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s ; Laurence Olivier was also nominated for an acting Academy Award in five different decades, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1978, as has Paul Newman. Caine appeared in seven films that were ranked in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century.
Fionn Whitehead
Fionn Whitehead is an English actor, known for playing the lead role in the 2017 film Dunkirk. His first acting credit was in the 2016 ITV miniseries Him.
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