Best Known As: The star of Alfie and The Man Who Would Be King
Name at birth: Maurice Micklewhite
In the 1960s Michael Caine was a cocky young British movie star with a Cockney accent. He played a caddish womanizer in Alfie (1966) and starred as the dark hero Harry Palmer in the spy film The Ipcress File (1965) and two sequels: Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967). In the 1970s he was memorable in The Man Who Would Be King (1975, with Sean Connery) and he won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role in Woody Allen's 1986 movie Hannah and Her Sisters. As he matured into a wry and deeper older leading man, Caine won a second Oscar as the melancholy orphanage doctor in The Cider House Rules (1999, with Charlize Theron). He played Alfred, the butler and confidant of Bruce Wayne, in the movies Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). Often a working-class hero in the movies, Caine is a famously hard worker in real life, having appeared in more than 120 films in the 50 years between 1958 and 2008. Caine was knighted in 2000 by Queen Elizabeth II. His autobiography What's It All About? was published in 1992.
Caine has been married twice: to actress Patricia Haines (1955-58) and to model Shakira Baksh from 1973 to present. With Haines he has a daughter, Dominique, born in 1957; with Baksh he has a daughter, Natasha, born in 1973... In his 1992 memoir, Caine says he met his second wife, Shakira, after seeing her in a Maxwell House coffee commercial.
"First of all, I choose the great [roles], and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent."
"The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly --because if they don't speak fast nobody will listen to them."
Career Highlights: Hannah and Her Sisters, Educating Rita, Dressed to Kill
First Major Screen Credit: Hell in Korea (1956)
Biography
Icon of British cool in the 1960s, leading action star in the late '70s, and knighted into official respectability in 1993, Michael Caine has enjoyed a long, varied, and enviably prolific career. Although he played a part in some notable cinematic failures, particularly during the 1980s, Caine remains one of the most established performers in the business, serving as a role model for actors and filmmakers young and old.
The son of a fish-porter father and a charwoman mother, Caine's beginnings were less than glamorous. Born Maurice Micklewhite in 1943, in the squalid South London neighborhood of Bermondsey, Caine got his first taste of the world beyond when he was evacuated to the countryside during World War II. A misfit in school, the military (he served during the Korean War), and the job pool, Caine found acceptance after answering a want ad for an assistant stage manager at the Horsham Repertory Company. Already star struck thanks to incessant filmgoing, Caine naturally took to acting, even though the life of a British regional actor was one step away from abject poverty. Changing his last name from Micklewhite to Caine in tribute to one of his favorite movies, The Caine Mutiny (1954), the actor toiled in obscurity in unbilled film bits and TV walk-ons from 1956 through 1962, occasionally obtaining leads on a TV series based on the Edgar Wallace mysteries.
Caine's big break occurred in 1963, when he was cast in a leading role in the epic, star-studded historical adventure film Zulu. Suddenly finding himself bearing a modicum of importance in the British film industry, the actor next played Harry Palmer, the bespectacled, iconoclastic secret agent protagonist of The Ipcress File (1965); he would go on to reprise the role in two more films, Funeral in Berlin (1966) and The Billion Dollar Brain (1967). After 12 years of obscure and unappreciated work, Caine was glibly hailed as an "overnight star," and with the success of The Ipcress Files, advanced to a new role as a major industry player. He went on to gain international fame in his next film, Alfie (1966), in which he played the title character, a gleefully cheeky, womanizing cockney lad. For his portrayal of Alfie, Caine was rewarded with a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination. One of the most popular action stars of the late '60s and early '70s, Caine had leading roles in films such as the classic 1969 action comedy The Italian Job (considered by many to be the celluloid manifestation of all that was hip in Britain at the time); Joseph L. Manckiewicz's Sleuth (1972), in which he starred opposite Laurence Olivier and won his second Oscar nomination; and The Man Who Would Be King (1976), which cast him alongside Sean Connery.
He had a dastardly turn as an underworld kingpin in Neil Jordan's small but fervently praised Mona Lisa (also 1986), and two years later once again proved his comic talents with the hit comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in which he and Steve Martin starred as scheming con artists. Although Caine was no less prolific during the 1990s, his career began to falter with a series of lackluster films. Among the disappointments were Steven Seagal's environmental action flick On Deadly Ground (1994) and Blood and Wine, a 1996 thriller in which he starred with Jack Nicholson and Judy Davis. In the late '90s, Caine began to rebound, appearing in the acclaimed independent film Little Voice (1998), for which he won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a seedy talent agent. In addition, Caine -- or Sir Michael, as he was called after receiving his knighthood in 2000 -- got a new audience through his television work, starring in the 1997 miniseries Mandela and de Klerk. The actor, who was ranked 55 in Empire Magazine's 1997 Top 100 Actors of All Time list, also kept busy as the co-owner of a successful London restaurant, and enjoyed a new wave of appreciation from younger filmmakers who praised him as the film industry's enduring model of British cool. This appreciation was further evidenced in 2000, when Caine was honored with a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of an abortionist in The Cider House Rules.
After launching the new millennium with both a revitalized career momentum and newfound popularity among fans who were too young to appreciate his early efforts, Caine once again scored a hit with the art-house circuit as the torturous Dr Royer-Collard in director Phillip Kaufman's Quills. Later paid homage by Hollywood icon Sylvester Stallone when the muscle-bound actor stepped into Caine's well-worn shoes for a remake of Get Carter (in which Caine also appeared in a minor role) the actor would gain positive notice the following year for his turn as a friend attempting to keep a promise in Last Orders. As if the Get Carter remake wasn't enought to emphasize Caine's coolness to a new generation of moviegoers, his turn as bespectacled super-spy Austin Powers' father in Austin Powers in Goldfinger proved that even years beyond The Italian Job Caine was still at the top of his game. Moving seamlessly from kitsch to stirring drama, Caine's role in 2002's The Quiet American earned the actor not only some of the best reviews of his later career, but another Oscar nomination as well.
Caine had long demonstrated an unusual versatility that made him a cult favorite with popular and arthouse audiences, but as the decade wore on, he demonstrated more box-office savvy by pursuing increasingly lucrative audience pleasers, almost exclusively for a period of time. The thesp first resusciated the triumph of his Muppet role with a brief return to family-friendly material in Disney's Secondhand Lions, alongside screen legend Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies, The Apostle). The two play quirky great-uncles to a maladjusted adolescent boy (Haley Joel Osment), who take the child for the summer as a guest on their Texas ranch. The film elicited mediocre reviews (Carrie Rickey termed it "edgeless as a marshmallow and twice as syrupy") but scored with ticket buyers during its initial fall 2003 run. Caine then co-starred with Christopher Walken and Josh Lucas in the family issues drama Around the Bend (2004). In 2005, perhaps cued by the bankability of Goldfinger and Lions, Caine landed a couple of additional turns in Hollywood A-listers. In that year's Nicole Kidman/Will Ferrell starrer Bewitched, he plays Nigel Bigelow, Kidman's ever philandering warlock father. Even as critics wrote the vehicle off as a turkey, audiences didn't listen, and it did outstanding business, doubtless helped by the weight of old pros Caine and Shirley Maclaine. That same year's franchise prequel Batman Begins not only grossed dollar one, but handed Caine some of his most favorable notices to date, as he inherited the role of Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, from Michael Gough.
Caine contributed an elegiac portrayal to Gore Verbinski's quirky late 2005 character drama The Weatherman, as Robert Spritz, the novelist father of Nic Cage's David Spritz, who casts a giant shadow over the young man. Roger Ebert praised the thesp's performance, observing, "[Caine] turns Robert into a man who wounds with a thousand little cuts, who is urbane and articulate and whose words are a rebuke not so much because of what he says, as by the tender regret with which he says them."
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).[1]
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.[2] Caine's father was of part Romani (Gypsy) ancestry[3] and a Catholic, though Caine was raised in his Protestant mother's religion,[4] but claims to be lapsed religiously.[5]
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".[9]
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.[10] After several minor roles, Caine entered the public eye as the upper-class British Army officer Gonville BromheadVC 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-classCockney, 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.[11]
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."[12] 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 filmDressed to Kill, the 1981 war filmEscape 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.
It was reported by Empire magazine that Caine had said that Harry Brown (released on 13 November 2009) would be his last lead role.[13] Caine later declared (in the Daily Mirror) that he had been misquoted by the magazine.[14]
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[citation needed]. The other is Jack Nicholson.
In 2008, he was awarded the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Showbusiness at the Variety Club Awards.[18]
In popular culture
Caine is a popular subject for impressionists 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:
“
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!
”
The line had been used earlier in the Spike Milligan script for "The Last Goon Show of All", performed on October 5th, 1972:
“
SECOMBE: ... And now, ladies and gentlemen, my husband and I have great pleasure in starting Goon Show number 161!
GRAMS: (Sound of sluggish engine turning over unsuccessfully.)
SECOMBE: Oh, my husband and I have great pleasure in starting this Goon Show number 161.
GRAMS: (Sound of dodgy engine failing again to start.)
SECOMBE: My husband and I are having great difficulty in starting Goon Show number 161.
SELLERS: (strange Michael Caine voice) 'Ello,'ello,'ello,'ello,'ello.
SECOMBE: Ah! A constable of Old England played by an ageing Peter Sellers.
SELLERS: I'm sorry sir, you cannot park that huge bloated Welsh body there.
SECOMBE: Watch it, Rozzer.
SELLERS: I 'ave been watchin' it, sir, and it gives me no pleasure ... there's not many people know that. What is your name sir?
SECOMBE: Harry Secombe.
SELLERS: What a splendid memory you've got, sir.
”
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.
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.[21]
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.[22]
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 (UK) 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?” [24]
“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.” [25]
In 2009 Caine openly criticised the Labour Party (UK) 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.” [26]
“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.” [27]
“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.” [28]
Musical career
Caine is a fan of chillout music and has compiled a mix CD called Cained, which was released in 2007 by UMTV.[29] 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.[30] 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.
^ 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 (Mar. 2009): 16. Print.
^William Hall (2004). The Biography of Sir Michael Caine;70 Not Out. John Blake. ISBN1-84454-019-7.
