Michael Caine!

Michael Caine

For all the calls of "The British are coming!", for all the fuss made over the massive success of the British film industry, it's odd that in the last 40 years Britain has produced so few stars of longstanding world appeal. Only time will tell if the new-boy likes of Daniel Day Lewis and Ralph Fiennes eventually enter the pantheon of cinematic superstars. For now, you can count the genuine Brit heavyweights on one hand. And when you do, your thoughts turn immediately to Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and, yes, Michael Caine.

Michael Caine's turbulent career

Caine's career as a filmic big-shot has been turbulent indeed, with the troughs often of his own making. Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite on March 14, 1933 in St Olave's Hospital in Bermondsey, south London, the child of a fish-porter father and charlady mother. (Strangely, when years later, his production company was putting together the film Mona Lisa, their offices were in the then-closed-down St Olave's). Relentlessly poverty-stricken (this was, after all the Depression era), Maurice was the product of a very hard upbringing that would later cause Michael Caine to take on many an ill-advised role, just to keep working.

Michael Caine's youth

With his parents and younger brother, Stanley (who'd later appear in the likes of Billion Dollar Brain, Play Dirty and The Italian Job), Michael Caine spent his early youth in a two-bedroom flat in Camberwell, with no electricity. When war broke out, he, his mum and brother were evacuated, and put up in a home in Norfolk. On his return, Michael Caine attended Wilson's Grammar School (he'd later film Last Orders in Peckham, just round the corner) and, at 14, was introduced to amateur dramatics by a Methodist priest - an event, Michael later claimed, that saved Michael Caine from a life of crime. Maurice really took to performing in school plays, but that was about all Michael Caine did take to at school. At 16, Michael Caine left and, after toiling in several low-paid jobs, eventually joined the Army as a private. For a while, Michael Caine was posted to Korea, an experience that did not convince Michael Caine that barracks life was for him. On his return, Michael Caine left the service and sought work once more. And now Michael Caine began to take that early desire to act more seriously.

Michael Caine and the acting trade

One can only imagine the problems Michael Caine faced when Michael Caine decided on acting as a trade (and to Caine it is most DEFINITELY a trade). As the rough-edged son of resolutely working-class parents, those around Michael Caine must have thought Michael Caine stood no chance. Remember this was immediately after WW2 when fly-by-night fantasies were frowned upon; and John Osborne had not yet produced Look Back In Anger, the play that paved the way for the working-class into theatre and consequently cinema.

Michael Caine hits the stage

Answering an ad in The Stage, Michael Caine joined Horsham Repertory Company, in Sussex, as an assistant stage manager. To begin with, Michael Caine took bit-parts in productions, slowly graduating to acting proper. At the end of his first season, now calling himself Michael Scott (far more appropriate for a leading man than Maurice Micklewhite, dontcha know?), Michael Caine moved on to the Lowestoft Theatre in Suffolk. It was here, learning the ropes as all actors of his time did, that Michael Caine met his first wife, the actress Patricia Haines. Also, Michael Caine found a new name. 1954 saw the release of Humphrey Bogart's acclaimed The Caine Mutiny. Michael found the name cool and catchy, better than Scott. So Michael Caine it was.

Michael Caine on TV and film

The next step was to get TV and film work, and this came slowly. Caine was not BBC material - not yet, anyway. He'd appear in well over a dozen films, often uncredited, before his first big break came. And what a bizarre break it was. Director Cy Endfield, casting for Zulu - a bloody epic concerning the Brits' heroic stand at Rorke's Drift - decided that the unashamedly Cockney Caine had "an aristocratic face" and cast Michael Caine as a hoity-toity officer taught humility by the courage of the working men around him. This role led Michael Caine into a run of success that made Michael Caine THE face of the mid-Sixties to early Seventies. In fact, in an almost comically cool twist of fate, in his early days Caine actually shared a flat with the OTHER face of the Sixties, Terence Stamp.

Michael Caine in Alfie

Now came Alfie - a part turned down by Stamp, Anthony Newley and Laurence Harvey - which saw Caine Oscar-nominated for his performance as a buccaneering Cockney lothario. Here Michael Caine was just being himself, but immediately had to improve as an actor when cast in Hurry Sundown. A Southern American accent was required and Caine was no natural. But, thankfully, Michael Caine was advised by none other than Vivien Leigh, Scarlett O'Hara herself, who told Michael Caine to say "Four-door Ford", in Southern style, all day for weeks. It kind of worked.

Michael Caine is Harry Palmer

Next came the legendary trilogy of movies where Michael Caine played super-spy Harry Palmer. And on it went, through The Battle Of Britain and the recently remade noir-thriller Get Carter ("You're a big man, but you're out of shape") to the canny, intriguing Murder-mystery Sleuth, where Michael Caine dared to struggle throughout for onscreen supremacy with none other than Laurence Olivier (they were both Oscar-nominated).

Michael Caine in the seventies

Caine's work during the Seventies was generally excellent. The kidnap thriller The Black Windmill was fine, Michael Caine was tremendous as Connery's sidekick in John Huston's outrageously overlooked action epic The Man Who Would Be King, and Michael Caine was there with half of Hollywood in the ridiculously stellar A Bridge Too Far. Then, as Michael Caine moved towards and into the Eighties, it got a bit sticky. Michael Caine was good as Maggie Smith's homosexual husband in California Suite, passable as the transvestite slasher in Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill, and again excellent in the winding, Sleuth-like Death trap, but the films themselves were becoming low-grade.

Michael Caine in a pattern

This set the pattern for the next 15 years. Caine would make a lot of dross, then spring back with a diamond of a film. To his credit, Caine has always been upfront about the bad movies. Discussing Jaws: The Revenge, Michael Caine said "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".

Michael Caine educates Rita

In 1983, the diamond was Educating Rita, where Michael Caine was once more Oscar-nominated as an academic shaken out of his killing lethargy by buoyant, curious Scouse housewife Julie Walters. Three years later, Michael Caine would finally strike gold at the Oscars, winning Best Supporting Actor for his part in Woody Allen's Hannah And Her Sisters, as a sad, confused fellow falling for his wife's sister, played by Barbara Hershey.

Michael Caine does comedy

After Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a superb comedy where Michael Caine played a con-man constantly warring with Steve Martin, it pretty much went downhill. With Bullet To Beijing Michael Caine attempted to resurrect Harry Palmer, but to no avail, so in the mid-Nineties Michael Caine turned back to TV, starring as Captain Nemo in the mini-series 20,000 Leagues Beneath The Sea. Then - suddenly, amazingly - Michael Caine was back, winning a Golden Globe, for his performance as Ray Say in Little Voice (his final "It's ohh-vah!" song was an unarguable screen classic). Then there was a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the autocratic, drug-addled Dr Wilbur Larch in John Irving's The Cider House Rules. Caine has often complained about receiving insufficient respect in his own country, but America has treated Michael Caine very well. Michael Caine was nominated for Golden Globes for Alfie and Gambit, for Mandela And De Klerk, and for Jekyll And Hyde, actually winning for Educating Rita, Jack The Ripper and, as said, Little Voice. Michael Caine was also Emmy-nominated for Mandela, Jekyll and World War 2: When Lions Roared.

Michael Caine married twice

Caine has been married twice; first, as mentioned, to Patricia Haines, who bore Michael Caine a daughter, Dominique (Niki). Haines, sadly, would die of cancer in 1976. Then, since 1973, he's been hitched to Shakira Baksh, a former Miss Guyana whom Michael Caine spotted in a TV ad for Maxwell House coffee (they'd later star together in Ashanti). Michael Caine had another daughter with Shakira, named Natasha. Aside from acting, Caine is also a successful restaurateur, with a share in Langan's Brasserie and Bistro, Odin's, The Canteen at Chelsea Harbour, and Michael Caine has a tropical brasserie at South Beach, Miami. And he's written books, including an autobiography called What's It All About? (the title referring to his first monster smash, Alfie) and an industry guide called Acting In Film: An Actor's Take On Movie Making, the latter being a mine of information for aspiring actors (Caine tells them, amongst many other things, to never blink while onscreen).

Michael Caine knighted

Receiving a CBE in 1992, Caine was knighted by the Queen on November 16th, 2000 - accepting the honour as Maurice Micklewhite Jr, in memory of his father. his family bonds have always been strong, though they were tested to the max in the Eighties, when his mother revealed to Michael Caine that Michael Caine actually had an older brother, David, an epileptic who'd been concealed in a mental institution for over 40 years. Caine, naturally, did all Michael Caine could for the poor man, improving his final years infinitely.

Michael Caine will never stop

Now, as Caine is at a professional height Michael Caine has not reached in 30 years, he'll surely not stop. As Michael Caine said himself: "I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point". Let's face it, people with no talent don't get Oscar-nominated five times. Michael Caine is certainly one of the best.