A Cockney legend of the screen

Sir Christopher Ondaatje writes about the English actor who has appeared in more than 160 films, and is known for his Cockney accent. He has won two Academy Awards, a BAFTA, and three Golden Globe Awards.

Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite on March 14, 1933 at St Olave’s Hospital in Rotherthithe, London, England. His mother was a cook and charwoman, and his father a fish market porter. He had an elder maternal half-bother, and a younger brother. He grew up in Southwark, London and was evacuated 100 miles north to North Runcton in Norfolk during the Second World War. After the War, when his father was demobbed, the family was rehomed by the Council in Marshall Gardens in Elephant and Castle in a prefrabricated house made in Canada. Most of London’s housing was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940 -1941.

“The prefabs … were intended to be temporary houses while London was reconstructed, but we ended up living there for eighteen years.”

– Michael Caine

The Elephant to Hollywood

Caine got his first acting part as the father of the two ugly sisters in Cinderella in a school play. His fly was undone and he got a laugh. This determined his ambition to be an actor. He won a scholarship to Hackney Downs School. After a year he moved to Wilson’s Grammar School which he left after getting a school certificate when he was 16. He then worked briefly as a filing clerk for a film company in Victoria Street.

In 1952, he was called up to do his National Service and served for two years in the British Army’s Royal Fusiliers in West Germany, and then on active service in the Korean War, where he was exposed to waves of human attacks by North Korea and China. He faced death several times.

“The rest of my life I have lived every bloody moment … When I wake up until the time I go to sleep.”

– Michael Caine

The Elephant to Hollywood

When he was 20, 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. He adopted the stage name Michael White. In 1951, he was cast as the drunkard Hindley in Wuthering Heights. He moved to the Lowestoft Repertory Company in Suffolk when he was twenty-one and met his first wife Patricia Haines. They have a daughter Dominique but the marriage did not survive. He moved to London and changed his name again to Michael Caine – as there was already a Michael White, an aspiring actor.

He moved in with another rising Cockney actor, Terence Stamp, and became friends with Peter O’Toole when he became his understudy in the 1959 West End play The Long and the Short and the Tall. He took over the role when O’Toole left to make Lawrence of Arabia.

He appeared regularly in small roles on television and got his first film role as one of the privates in A Hill in Korea. His first credited role on the BBC was in 1956 when he played Boudousse in the Jean Anouilh play The Lark.

Caine’s big break came when he was cast in the Cockney comedy Next Time I’ll Sing to You at the New Arts Theatre in January 1963. The play moved to the Criterion in Piccadilly, directed by Michael Codron. Backstage he met Stanley Baker who was one of the four stars in Caine’s first film A Hill in Korea. He told Caine about a film Zulu, which he was producing and acting in and suggested he meet the director, Cy Endfield, as there was a good part for a Cockney actor in it. Unfortunately, when he met Endfield, he was told that the part had already been given to James Booth, a friend of Caine’s, because he looked more Cockney than Caine. Endfield then told the 6′2 Caine that he looked more like an officer than a Cockney and offered him the part of a snobbish officer after Caine had assured him that he could do a “posh” accent.

“My screen test for the aristocratic and effete Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in ‘Zulu’ was the single most nerve-racking thing I’ve ever done … it was a complete disaster. I did not ooze star quality, I oozed sweat, panic and abject terror.”

– Michael Caine Blowing the Bloody Doors Off (2018)

But Caine got the part, because Cy Endfield was American and didn’t have the endemic British class prejudice. He never looked back. Zulu was followed by two of Caine’s best-known roles: the rough-edged crook-turned-spy Henry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965), and the titular womanising young Cockney in Alfie (1966).

“It made me a star in America as well, and it was my first nomination for an Academy Award.”

– Michael Caine Blowing the Bloody Doors Off (2018)

Caine went on to play Henry Palmer in a further four films: Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Bullet to Beijing (1995), and Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996). He had become a household name.

“If you danced at the Ad Lib Club just behind the Empire Cinema on Leicester Square, as I did, the Rolling Stones and The Beatles might be grooving around next to you. David Bailey would be in the corner, romancing Jean Shrimpton. In another corner Roman Polanski was with Sharon Tate … My barber was Vidal Sassoon. My tailor was Douglas Heyward – the tailor to Ralph Lauren’s suits. When I did a bit part in ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ I was paired with an unknown actor called Donald Sutherland. Willis Hall’s ‘The Long and the Short and the Tall’ made Peter O’Toole a star. Sean Connery was playing Bond by this time. Harry Salzman, Bond’s producer, asked me to have coffee with him. I thought I was going to get a part in a James Bond film ... instead I got the part in the ‘Ipcress File’ and a seven year contract.”

– Michael Caine

Blowing the Bloody Doors Off (2018)

Michael Caine starred in the 1969 comedy caper film The Italian Job as Charlie Croker, the leader of a Cockney criminal gang, with Noel Coward. He then was a RAF fighter pilot in Battle of Britain (1969), Get Carter (1971), Sleuth opposite Laurence Olivier 1972), and The Man Who Would Be King (1972) with Sean Connery, to widespread acclaim. The film was directed by John Huston.

“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.”

John Huston

Director, The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

In the 1970s, Caine appeared in several films including The Black Windmill (1974), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), the Swarm (1978), California Suite (1978), and Ashanti (1979). He was criticised for his choice of roles and for taking parts strictly for the money, but once you’ve been poor it was nice to be comfortably wealthy. He enjoyed further acclaim in the 1980s with The Island (1980) and The Jigsaw Man (1982) again with Laurence Olivier. He costarred with Julie Walters in Educating Rita (1983) for which he won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, and won his first Academy Award for Supporting Actor in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), directed by Woody Allen. He also played opposite Steve Martin in the hilarious crime comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for one of his best screen performances.

Michael Caine is the author of three memoirs: What’s it All About? (1992); The Elephant to Hollywood (2010); and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life (2018). The books cover Caine’s film career over several decades, including success in the 1980s: Dressed to Kill (1981); Deathtrap (1982); Mona Lisa (1986); and Jack the Ripper (1988) with Jane Seymour. He also talks about his personal life and his second marriage to Shakira Bakshi in 1973. They have a daughter Natasha Haleema, and she appeared in a bit-part in The Man Who Would be King (1978).

Caine found good parts harder to get in the 1990s, but appeared with Roger Moore in Bullseye! (1990), and as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). He played the director Lloyd Fellowes in Noises Off (1992), and a villain in On Deadly Ground (1994). He was still living off his reputation in The Italian Job and Get Carter. Little Voice (1998) won him a Golden Globe Award, and The Cider House Rules (1999) won him his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His attempt to retire in the early 1990s didn’t work and he made some of his best films in the 2000s including Miss Congeniality (2000) opposite Sandra Bullock – an enormous box-office success, and Quills opposite Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet. In 2001 he starred in Last Orders opposite Helen Mirren and Tom Courtney. The Quiet American (2002) won him his sixth Academy Award nomination. He simply wasn’t allowed to retire. The film parts kept coming in and so did the money. Alfie was remade in 2007 with Jude Law playing Caine’s original role.

“I learned so much from watching how he monitored his performance, and also how little he had to do. He’s a master technician … the amount of variety he’s put in there is breathtaking.”

– Jude Law Actor, Alfie

Caine continued with smaller roles in the 2000s: Austin Power’s father in Goldmember (2002), and opposite Robert Duvall in Secondhand Lions (2003). He played Henry Lahr in the 2004 film Around the Bend, and as Nicole Kidman’s father in Bewitched (2005). He was cast as Bruce Wayne’s butler in Batman Begins (2005), and with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore in Children of Men (2006), followed by The Prestige starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. In 2007 he appeared in Flawless, and in 2008 and 2012 he reprised his role as Alfred in the Batman sequels The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Empire Magazine announced in 2009 that Caine’s film Harry Brown would be his last leading role

“You don’t retire in this business; the business retires you.”

– Michael Caine

But Caine, who will be 90 years old in March this year, keeps working. He was offered the part of Professor Stephen Miles in Inception (2010) as Leonardo DiCaprio’s father – a financial and critical success earning eight Academy Award nominations. He starred in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) as Josh Hutchersons’s grandfather, followed by Interstellar (2014), a science fiction film, and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) for which he won a London Film Critics Award for British Actor of the Year. He was getting older parts and they were working. He read Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Claus and Big Claus (2015) with Roger Moore and Stephen Fry for UNICEF, and appeared in a cameo role in Dunkirk (2017). He took on the role of Brian Reader in King of Thieves (2015) about a safe deposit burglary. Even after to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he found work as a British intelligence officer in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, Come Away (2020), Twist (2021), where he played Fagin, and Best Sellers (2021) prompted Caine to say again that he was not retiring.

Michael Caine has somehow made himself a British cultural icon as a tall fair-haired workingclass actor with a Cockney accent. He has brought some of British cinemas most iconic characters to life and introduced his own laid-back Cockney gangster into pop culture. In fact, his accent has become his calling card. Ever-proud of his working-class roots, he boasts that he has played football with Pelé and danced with Bob Fosse. His two closest friends were the two James Bond actors Sean Connery and Roger Moore – both now sadly dead. He was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1992, and joined his two best friends by receiving a Knighthood in the 2000 Birthday Honours list by Queen Elizabeth. Together they have appeared in dozens of films that were ranked the British Film Institute’s greatest films of the 20th century. When recently asked if he had any regrets, he replied humbly:

“I’d like to come back as me and do it all over again”

– Michael Caine

They sure don’t make ’em like they used to.

• Sir Christopher Ondaatje is the author of The Last Colonial. He acknowledges that he has quoted liberally from Wikipedia, The Elephant to Hollywood (2010) by Michael Caine, and