He spent much of his early career being chased by gun-toting gangsters,
screeching around in a Mini Cooper and leaping fearlessly between bedrooms,
but Michael Caine, star of Alfie, The Italian Job and Get Carter, has had
enough of stunts. “I’m 75 years old, thank you very much,” he growls. “I did
all those and I’m done now.”
Caine couldn’t even drive when he filmed The Italian Job, so it was never him
behind the wheel of that Mini; even while serving with the British Army in
the 1950s, he always favoured the path of least resistance. “I try to avoid
danger at all cost,” he says. “Ex-soldiers never do dangerous things. You
used up all your luck. I served in the occupation force in Berlin in 1951
and then the Korean war for one year. I got out as quick as I could. I
perfected cowardice, which no one noticed.”
Caine’s national service days still provide a rich seam of material for his
acting. In The Dark Knight, the latest Batman instalment, which is out on
Friday, he plays Alfred Pennyworth, the superhero’s butler, and his
portrayal is based on memories of his first army sergeant. “I speak in his
military voice,” Caine says. “He’d previously served in the SAS but when
he got wounded he didn’t want to leave the SAS - old soldiers become very
institutionalised - so he got a job running the sergeants’ mess. My voice in
the film is an exact copy of his.”
This is the second time Caine has played the role; the first was in Batman
Begins in 2005. “For me the greatest thing about playing Alfred is that he’s
a character for all time and you can play it as long as you like,” he says.
“Like Michael Gough, a friend of mine, who played Alfred in so many Batman
films until he was 84. So I have another 10 years to go.”
The latest Batman film is remarkable in that Caine and the rest of the cast
are taking a back seat to Heath Ledger, the troubled actor starring as the
Joker, who died this year from an overdose of prescription drugs at the age
of just 28. Caine had nothing but admiration for the young star and is among
those backing Ledger for a posthumous Oscar.
“I only got to know him because we just used to talk between takes,” Caine
says. “He was a very nice boy. It’s such a sad thing, so sad. He was a quiet
man; a gentle and quiet person - and very unlike the Joker. But an
extraordinary actor, and he gives a riveting performance.Without anything
else, just go and see the damn film for his performance.”
Caine had his own battles as a young star, developing a dangerous alcohol
habit in the 1960s, but he has no regrets about choosing the acting life.
When Maurice Micklewhite - he adopted his professional name in the 1950s -
was born in Rotherhithe hospital, southeast London, in 1933, his parents
were living in a one-bedroom flat. His father had been a porter at
Billingsgate fish market. Gambling, drink, financial hardship and the
stifling, filthy inner city characterised Caine’s early years until the
second world war set him free.
Maurice senior went to war while Caine and his mother, Ellen, a charlady, were
evacuated to Norfolk, to fresh air and a new school, where he passed his
ex-ams and won a place at grammar school. After serving out his national
service, he was urged by his father to join him at the fish market but
Caine’s horizons had expanded. “Who listens to their parents?” he says,
smiling. “Parents will tell you, ‘Don’t do that - get a regular job.’ If you
listen to your parents, you’re normally stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s or
Safeway. So I became an actor instead. Suppose I’d listened to him. You
wouldn’t have wanted to interview me about fish markets, would you?”
Instead, he won the part of Peter O’Toole’s understudy in Willis Hall’s play
The Long and the Short and the Tall at the Royal Court, London, which led to
a few walk-on film parts and then his first big role, in Zulu in 1964. He’d
auditioned for the role of Henry Hook, which went to James Booth, but was
called back to read for the part of Lieutenant Bromhead, which he took.
Finally, his career was on the up. The Ipcress File followed in 1965, with
Caine playing Harry Palmer, a soldier turned secret agent, although
production was almost halted because of problems with the script. Then came
Alfie, and Caine was a household name.
Once again, it nearly didn’t happen. Caine was by no means first in line for
the role of Alfie Elkins - Laurence Harvey, James Booth and Anthony Newley
all reportedly turned it down because they didn’t want to be associated with
the movie’s abortion scene; Terence Stamp also declined it. For Caine, being
cast as the lusty limousine driver in the 1966 film was a godsend. “I was 29
when I made Zulu, which was my first proper part in a real film. You never
make any money in your first film so I was absolutely broke until I was 30.
And then when I was 32, after making The Ipcress File and Alfie, I bought my
first car, which was a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. And I couldn’t even drive.”
Caine famously turned up at the Rolls-Royce dealership with a shopping list
that read: “Razor blades, toothpaste, Rolls-Royce, eggs . . . ” and so on.
Brandishing this crumpled bit of paper and dressed somewhat scruffily on a
Saturday morning, he was given short shrift by the dealer. Caine promised to
buy his Roller somewhere else and drive past in it the following weekend.
“And that’s what I did,” Caine has previously related, keen to have a laugh
at the expense of the British class system. “I drove by and I gave him a
very particular wave . . . with two fingers.” Being driven in the Roller
gave Caine a taste for the style of living that his working-class parents
could only have imagined. “I discovered that the greatest luxury you can
ever have is a car and a chauffeur.”
A tax exile from the late 1970s, he now lives mainly in his two British homes,
in Chelsea Harbour, west London, and Surrey, and his seafront home in Miami,
where he spends January to March. “After the Harold Wilson years I lived in
Los Angeles for eight years. There was a moment when the income tax was 82%
in England on people like me. And I made a vow then that I would never give
more
Continued from page 6 than 40% of my income to anyone except my wife. When the
taxes came down, I returned to England, but it’s not a case of greed. It’s
simply that I do not work for the government; I work for me. I am not a
communist.”
He may be no communist but that doesn’t mean he has time for the British
Establishment. “I have no respect for position whatsoever. I treat everybody
exactly the same. The Queen, I treat the same as the woman who cleans the
hotel room. I’m polite and nice to everybody and that’s that. But the thing
that annoys me, in a conservative way, is that I know that there are young
people in England sitting at home watching morning television - and I am
paying them, on benefits,” he grumbles.
“A lot of them are unable to work, probably, literally sick, but there are a
hell of a lot who are getting away with something, and that pisses me off -
because I’m paying. I’m getting up at six o’clock in the morning, learning
pages of dialogue, going out in the winter rain - and they’re all lying in
bed while I’m keeping them.”
Caine, despite his two Oscars, 100 or so movies and wealth, likes to see
himself as a down-to-earth grafter. After a string of groundbreaking early
roles, he often seemed to take anything going, simply for the money. Amid
some average fare, there were undeniable high-lights: The Eagle Has Landed
in 1976, Educating Rita in 1983, Hannah and Her Sisters, for which he won an
Oscar, in 1986, Little Voice in 1998, The Cider House Rules in 1999, his
second Oscar-winning role, and Last Orders in 2001.
Throughout his career, and even while living abroad, he has been proud to
regard himself as British. “I think the most British thing about me is my
feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are
always known to be well mannered and cold, but we’re not cold –
we don’t interfere in your situation. If we’re heartbroken we don’t scream
in your face with tears; we go home and cry on our own. It’s completely to
do with your comfort - we don’t intrude on your space. That’s very English.”
It was the great British weather that finally brought Caine back to his roots.
“I enjoyed my time in LA but I was happy to get home because I had grown up
with the seasons, which sounds kind of silly, but there are no seasons in
Los Angeles. I realised as I got older just how involved I am with the
seasons because I am a gardener and I love the rain.”
Caine is content with life. He has been married to Shakira Baksh, a former
Miss Guyana, for 35 years; they have one daughter, Natasha, 35, a model
turned interior designer and property developer.
They met after he spotted Baksh in a television advertisement for Maxwell
House coffee. Entranced by her beauty, Caine set about finding out who she
was and, after bumping into an advertising-industry friend at Tramp
nightclub in the West End that night, he discovered her living on the Fulham
Road. After several phone calls, she agreed to meet him. “For our first
date, I turned up in a convertible Rolls-Royce, and I wore a white Nehru
suit with no collar,” he recalls.
His first marriage, to Patricia Haines, the late British actress, had ended in
divorce in 1958 after three years and had produced his first daughter,
Dominique (known as Nikki). Asked the secret to a happy marriage, he replies
emphatically: “Never share a bathroom with a woman. We’ve always had two
bathrooms. We book into hotels and we ask for two bedrooms and you can see
them thinking that our marriage is on the rocks, but I’m just trying to get
another bathroom.”
He has equally straightforward advice on ageing. “For me the best part of
ageing is the fact that you’re not dead,” he says bluntly. “People ask you,
‘How do you feel about getting old?’ And I say, ‘Well, think of the
alternative.’ There’s only one alternative to getting old.”
Ever the straight talker, Caine seems to regard his advancing years as the
perfect excuse to come out with what’s on his mind or simply to say nothing.
“When you’re old you don’t have to say much and you don’t have to listen any
more because nobody’s going to tell you anything that you don’t know. I have
a best friend called Leslie Bricusse [a British composer and lyricist] and,
between him and me, we know everything. So if I don’t know something, I ring
him and he knows it.”
Caine’s no curmudgeon; he just doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He is a knight
bachelor - Sir Maurice to you - an honour bestowed in 2000 for services to
drama. That entitles him to the trappings of an elder statesman.
While the rest of Hollywood is driving Priuses, he’s devoted to his Lexus LX
470 SUV. “I only like 4x4s. I don’t like sitting in saloons, down on the
ground. I like to be up there to see what the story is. That’s me.”
He’s at his happiest sitting back in luxury on a private jet, looking
down on the sprawling, messy city of his birth. “I have a tightknit circle
of friends, and I don’t make new friends very easily - first of all,
they have to have a private aeroplane,” he says. “I have enough friends. Do
you know how many people I know? I’m 75 years old; I’ve been in show
business for all that time - I know everybody.”
MY STUFF... ON MY CD CHANGER
Nina Simone’s Sinnerman and Phyllis Nelson’s Move Closer. I’m a big fan of
chill-out music and I’ve been a secret DJ for 40 years, making tapes and CDs
for friends. I was having dinner with Elton John at his house in Nice, and
he was playing background music and was surprised I knew many of the names
of the artists. He convinced me to put out my own chill-out compilation,
called Cained, which was released last year. It’s largely romantic -
seduction with a beat.
ON MY DVD PLAYER
Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. That’s my favourite film of all time. Mostly I
watch sports, though
I WOULD NEVER THROW AWAY
Natasha, my second daughter, was born prematurely and she was in an incubator.
The only way I could touch her was through this little hole; they disinfect
your hand, and you put a finger through to hold their hand. Someone took a
picture of that, which I would never throw away.
CAINE THROUGH THE DECADES
1960sAlfie (1966) Caine plays a charming, feckless womaniser in the
film that made him an international star and earned his first Oscar
nomination
1970sGet Carter (1971) Slated by critics at the time, Jack Carter’s
bloody search for vengeance is now widely regarded as a British classic
1980sEducating Rita (1983) This tale of a working-class girl taking an
Open University course was Julie Walters’s film debut and a return to form
for Caine
1990sLittle Voice (1998) Caine brings subtlety to the role of a seedy
agent trying to push a shy teenager, played by Jane Horrocks, onto the stage
2000sThe Dark Knight (2008) Heath Ledger’s Joker is set to steal the
show but Caine offers light relief as Batman’s avuncular butler
