Sir Michael Caine, CBE (born Maurice Joseph
Micklewhite, Jr.; 14 March 1933) is an English
film
actor. Caine has appeared in more than 100 films, and is one
of only two actors to have been nominated for an Academy Award for
acting (leading or supporting) in every decade since the 1960s
(
Jack Nicholson being the
other).
He became known for several notable critically acclaimed
performances, particularly in films such as
Zulu (1964);
The Ipcress File (1965), and
others as
Harry Palmer; the womanising
title character in
Alfie
(1966);
The Italian Job
(1969);
Get Carter (1971);
The Man Who Would
Be King (1975);
Educating Rita (1983); an Academy
Award-winning performances for supporting actor in
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
and
The Cider House
Rules (1999); as
Nigel Powers
in the parody
Austin
Powers in Goldmember (2002); and more recently as
Alfred Pennyworth, the butler from
Batman Begins and
The Dark
Knight.
Caine was
knighted in 2000 by
Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his
contribution to cinema. He retains his strong
cockney accent.
Early life
Caine was
born in Rotherhithe
, South East London
, the son of Ellen Frances Marie (née Burchell), a cook and charlady, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, Sr., a
fish market porter. Caine's father was of part
Romani ancestry and a
Catholic, though Caine was raised in his
Protestant mother's religion, but claims
to be lapsed religiously.
He grew up
in Camberwell
, England, and during
World War II was evacuated
to North
Runcton
, in Norfolk.
In 1944 he
passed his eleven plus exam,
winning a scholarship to Hackney Downs Grocers School
. After a year there he moved to Wilson's
Grammar School (now Wilson's School
) in Wallington, South London
, which he left at sixteen after gaining a School Certificate in six
subjects. He then worked briefly as a filing clerk and
messenger for a film company in Victoria Street
and the film producer Jay
Lewis in Wardour
Street
. From April 1952 to 1954 he did the compulsory National Service in the British Army as a Fusilier in the Royal
Fusiliers, serving at the BAOR HQ in Iserlohn
, Germany
and in
combat in the Korean War. Caine
has said he would like to see the return of National Service to
help combat youth violence saying "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."
Career
When Caine first became an actor, he adopted the
stage name "Michael Scott". His agent soon
informed him, however, that another actor was already using the
same name, and that he had to come up with a new name immediately.
Speaking
to his agent from a telephone box in Leicester Square
in London, Caine looked around for inspiration,
noted that The Caine
Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon Cinema, and decided to
change his name to "Michael Caine". He has joked in
interviews that had he looked the other way, he would have ended up
as "Michael
One Hundred
and One Dalmatians".
1960s
Caine's
acting career began in Horsham
, Sussex. He responded to an advertisement for
an assistant stage manager for the Horsham-based Westminster
Repertory Company. This led to walk-on roles at the Carfax Theatre.
After several minor roles, Caine entered the public eye as the
upper-class
British Army officer
Gonville Bromhead VC in the 1964 film
Zulu. This proved paradoxical, as Caine was
to become notable for using a
regional accent, rather than the
Received Pronunciation
hitherto considered proper for film actors.
At the time, Caine's
working-class Cockney, just as with The
Beatles' Liverpudlian
accents, stood out to American and British
audiences alike. Zulu was closely followed by two
of his best-known roles: the spy
Harry
Palmer in
The Ipcress
File (1965), and the woman-chasing title character in
Alfie (1966). He went on
to play Palmer in a further four films,
Funeral in Berlin (1966),
Billion Dollar Brain
(1967),
Bullet to Beijing
(1995), and
Midnight in
Saint Petersburg (1995). Caine made his first movie in the
United States in 1966, after an invitation from Shirley MacLaine to
play opposite her in
Gambit.
During
the first two weeks, whilst staying at The Beverly
Hills Hotel
, he met long term friends John Wayne and agent "Swifty" Lazar.
1970s
After working on
The Italian
Job, with
Noël Coward, and
a solid role as an 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
The Man Who Would Be
King (1975), co-starring
Sean
Connery and directed by
John
Huston). In 1976, he appeared in the screen adaptation by
Tom Mankiewicz of the
Jack Higgins novel,
The Eagle Has Landed, as
Oberst (Colonel) Kurt Steiner, the commander of a
Luftwaffe paratroop brigade disguised as Polish
paratroopers, whose mission was to kidnap or kill the then-British
Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill,
alongside co-stars
Donald
Sutherland,
Robert Duvall,
Jenny Agutter and
Donald Pleasance. Subsequently, in 1978, he
starred in
The Silver Bears, an adaptation of Paul
Erdman's (1974) novel of the same name. Caine also was part of an
all-star cast in
A Bridge
Too Far (1977).
1980s
By the end of the decade, he had moved to the United States, but
his choice of roles was often criticised he admitted to and has
since made many self-deprecating comments about taking parts in
numerous movies he knew to be bad strictly for the money, despite
working with Hollywood's highly regarded directors such as
Irwin Allen,
Richard Fleischer,
Michael Ritchie and
Oliver Stone. Caine was averaging two films a
year, but these included such failures as the
Academy Award-nominated
The Swarm (1978),
Ashanti (1979) (which he claimed were
the worst two films of all the other worst films he ever made),
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). Although
Caine also took better roles, including a
BAFTA-winning turn in
Educating Rita (1983), and an
Oscar-winning one in
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
and a
Golden Globe-nominated one in
Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels (1988), he continued to appear in notorious
duds like the financially-successful-but-critical-failure
Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
(in which he had mixed feelings about the production and the final
cut) and
Bullseye! (1990); his
appearing in so many films which did not meet with critical or box
office acclaim made him the butt of numerous jokes on the subject.
Of the former, Caine famously said (primarily about
Jaws: The
Revenge) "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it
was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it
is terrific." All these film failures later became
cult films among his fans today. His other
successful films (either critically and/or financially) were the
1978
Academy Award-winning
California Suite,
the 1980
Golden Globe-nominated
slasher film Dressed to Kill, the 1981
war film Escape to Victory, the 1982 film
Deathtrap, and the 1986
Academy Award-nominated
Mona Lisa.
1990s
The 1990s were a lean time for Caine, as he found good parts harder
to come by. A high point came when he played
Ebenezer Scrooge in the
critically-acclaimed
Muppet
Christmas Carol (1992), which he considers to be one of
his most memorable roles. He played the beleaguered stage director
Lloyd Dallas in the film adaptation of
Noises Off (1992). He also played a
villain in the
Steven Seagal flop
On Deadly Ground (1994).
He was in two
straight to video
Harry Palmer sequels and a few
television movies. 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 1998's
Little Voice was seen as something
of a return to form, and won him a
Golden Globe Award.
2000s
Better parts followed, including
The Cider House Rules
(1999), for which he won his second Oscar,
Last Orders (2001),
The Quiet American
(2002) and others which helped rehabilitate his reputation. Several
of Caine's classic films have been
remade to
appeal to new, younger audiences, 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 also
starred in
Austin Powers:
Goldmember (2002) as Austin's father. In 2005, he was cast
as
Bruce Wayne's butler
Alfred Pennyworth in the first production
of the new
Batman film
series. In 2006, he appeared in the films
Children of Men and
The Prestige. In 2007 he appeared
in
Flawless, while in
2008 he reprised his role as Alfred in
Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed
Batman sequel,
The
Dark Knight as well as starring in the British drama
Is Anybody There?, which
explores the final days of life.
It was reported by
Empire
magazine that Caine had said that
Harry Brown (released on 13 November
2009) would be his last
lead role.
Caine later declared (in the
Daily
Mirror) that he had been misquoted by the magazine.
Awards and honours
Caine has been Oscar-nominated 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. Caine
is one of only two actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for
acting (either lead or supporting) in every decade since the 1960s
. The other is
Jack Nicholson.
He was appointed
Commander of the
Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1992
Queen's Birthday Honours, and in
the 2000
New Year Honours he was
knighted as
Sir Maurice
Micklewhite, CBE. (such awards must be conferred upon
recipients' legal names, and Caine had not yet abandoned his birth
name).
In 2008, he was awarded the prize for Outstanding Contribution to
Showbusiness at the
Variety Club
Awards.
In popular culture
Caine is a popular subject for
impressionist and
mimics, having a voice and manner of speaking that are
distinctive, yet fairly easy to imitate. Most Caine impressions
include the catchphrase "Not a lot of people know that."
Peter Sellers initiated this when he appeared
on
BBC1's
Parkinson show on 28 October 1972 and
said: The line had been used earlier in the
Spike Milligan script for
The Last Goon
Show of All, performed on October 5th, 1972:In 1983, Caine was
given the line to say as an in-joke in the film
Educating Rita. The line was
parodied in
Harry Enfield's Television
Programme by
Paul
Whitehouse, who introduced himself with the line "My name is
Michael Paine, and I am a nosey neighbour." On 16 December 2007,
Caine was the second guest on
Michael
Parkinson's
Final Conversation.
Personal life
Caine
lives near Leatherhead
in Surrey
, and is
patron to the Leatherhead Drama Festival. He has also lived in
North Stoke,
Oxfordshire
, Clewer
near
Windsor,
Berkshire
, Lowestoft
in Suffolk and Chelsea
Harbour
in London. In addition, Caine owns a unit at The
Apogee in Miami
Beach, Florida
. He still keeps a small flat near where he
grew up in South East London.
He was married to actress
Patricia
Haines from 1955 to 1958. They had one daughter named
Dominique. 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. They have a daughter named Natasha.
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.
Caine is a fan of the
Chelsea Football
Club.
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 (now Fields In Trust) of which Caine was a
prominent supporter.
Unlike many actors who adopt their
stage
name for everyday use, Caine still uses his real name when he
is not working.
Politics
Caine has been open about his political views. He left Britain in
the 1970s, citing the 82% tax levied on top earners by the
Labour Party government of the time, but
returned to Britain several years later when taxes were
lowered:
“I decided not to become a tax exile, so I stayed in
Britain, but they kept putting the tax up, so I’d do any old thing
every now and then to pay the tax, that was my tax exile
money.
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?”
“I voted for Maggie
Thatcher because I thought we needed a change from that long
period of socialism; I voted for Tony
Blair because we had a great long period of
Conservatism.”
In 2009 Caine openly criticised the
Labour Party government’s new 50% tax on
top earners:
“The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent and if
it goes to 51 I will be back in America.
They have reached their limit with me and that's what
will happen to a lot of people.
You know how much they made out of that high taxation
all those years ago?
Nothing.
But they sent a mass of incredible brains to
America.
We've got 3.5million layabouts laying about on
benefits, and I'm 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep
them.
Let's get everybody back to work so we can save a
couple of billion and cut tax, not keep sticking it
on.”
“You're saying to poor people, 'let's tax those rich
gits' and I understand that.
You slice up the cake, give everyone a chance, but
don't destroy the people that are making the bloody
cake!
I really believe about taking care of people, I don't
mind paying tax.
It's how the government spends my tax that I detest,
really detest, because I see the waste.
More money than all our income tax is spent on
benefits.
Now you tell me there is nothing wrong with that
system.”
In 2009 Caine revealed he was likely to vote for the
Conservative Party again:
“I'll probably vote Conservative.
I mean, we're in a terrible state whichever way you
look at it, socially, financially and politically, so just give the
other guy a chance.
I don't know what Cameron's (David Cameron) going to do, but in the end you
vote out of desperation.
You just have to have someone new and see what
happens.”
Musical career
Caine is a fan of
chillout music and has
compiled a mix CD called
Cained, which was released in
2007 by
UMTV. According to Michael Caine, he
met with
Elton John, and was discussing
musical tastes, when Caine claimed that he had been creating
chillout mix tapes as an amateur for years. Also in music, Caine
provided vocal samples for British band
Madness for their 1984 hit
"Michael Caine" as his daughter was a
fan. He has sung in movie roles as well, including for the musical
movie,
The Muppet
Christmas Carol.
Filmography, Awards and nominations
References
External links
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