From left to right, singer and musician Paul McCartney of the Beatles, his girlfriend, actress Jane Asher, actress Millicent Martin, actor Michael Caine, and Caine's girlfriend Elizabeth Ercy at the premiere of Caine's new film 'Alfie' at the Plaza Theatre, London, 25th March 1966.
Michael Caine and Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan at the Dorchester Hotel for a party being held for the film 'The Last Valley', London, 11th August 1969.
Sir Michael Caine poses for portraits to promote his new film 'Harry Brown' on October 7, 2009 in London, England. The film is released nationwide on November 13.
Sir Michael Caine is an English actor, producer, and author. He appeared in more than 100 films, and his amiable Cockney persona was usually present in each performance.
Background
Ethnicity:
Michael's father was of English and Irish heritage, while his mother was English.
Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr. on 14 March 1933, in London, United Kingdom; the son of Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Sr., a fish market porter, and Ellen Frances Marie Burchell, a cook and charwoman. Caine had an elder maternal half-brother named David William Burchell, and a younger full brother, Stanley Micklewhite.
Michael grew up in Southwark, London, and during the Second World War, he was evacuated to North Runcton near King's Lynn in Norfolk. After the war, his father was demobilised, and the family were rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens at the Elephant and Castle in a prefabricated house made in Canada, as much of London's housing stock had been damaged during the Blitz in 1940–1941.
Education
On passing his eleven plus examination in 1944 Michael enrolled at Hackney Down Grocers’ School, winning a scholarship to fund his education. However, in 1945, he shifted to Wilson's Grammar School in Camberwell, where under the guidance of his English teacher he began to take interest in literature. He received his School Certificate in 1949.
In 1949 Michael began to work as a filing clerk in a film company. In April 1952, he was drafted into the national service and took active part in the Korean War. He never forgot what he experienced during this war.
On being discharged from the national service in 1954 Michael first obtained a job of an assistant stage manager at Westminster Repertory in Horsham, Sussex. According to the terms and conditions, he was also required to perform some walk-on parts for the company.
The former Maurice Micklewhite took his screen name from the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny. Caine entered motion pictures in 1956 and played a variety of roles in such British productions as A Hill in Korea (1956), How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), and Zulu (1964). Success came with The Ipcress File (1965)—the first of four films in which Caine portrayed British spy Harry Palmer—but his real breakthrough was in the title role of Alfie (1966), for which he received an Academy Award nomination as best actor. His other successful films of the 1960s include Funeral in Berlin (1966), Gambit (1966), The Wrong Box (1966), Hurry Sundown (1967), and The Italian Job (1969).
In these early films, Caine established himself as a versatile actor whose everyman qualities were well suited to a variety of roles. His cool urbanity was perhaps the only constant among performances that included cynical secret agents, gregarious playboys, rugged adventurers, refined gentlemen, humble schoolteachers, and psychotic killers. His star quality was not sacrificed for such versatility, and he retained his affable Cockney persona in most roles. He was especially deft at light comedy and usually managed to reveal subtly humorous elements within a given screenplay.
By the 1970s Caine had achieved international stardom. He appeared in the cult classic Get Carter (1971) and received another best actor Oscar nomination for Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Sleuth (1972), in which he starred opposite Laurence Olivier. He followed these successes with such popular films as John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and John Sturges’s The Eagle Has Landed (1976). He continued his prodigious output during the 1980s, appearing in some two dozen films during the decade. Though many of these films were dismal failures, Caine’s reputation did not suffer, because he had garnered respect for being such a tireless workhorse.
His better films of the 1980s included Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980), Deathtrap (1982), Educating Rita (1983; best actor Oscar nomination), Mona Lisa (1986), Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986; Academy Award for best supporting actor), Without a Clue (1988), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988). By the end of the 20th century, Caine had appeared in more than 100 films. He won his second best-supporting-actor Oscar for The Cider House Rules (1999) and was nominated as best actor for his performance as a conflicted British journalist in Vietnam in The Quiet American (2002).
In 2005 Caine appeared in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, playing the superhero’s butler and confidant, Alfred. The film was a critical and commercial success. He reprised the role in the sequels The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Caine’s other notable films included the thrillers Children of Men (2006) and The Prestige (2006), the latter also directed by Nolan. In 2007 he starred in Kenneth Branagh’s remake of Sleuth, portraying the character originally played by Olivier.
Caine later appeared as a pensioner turned vigilante in Harry Brown (2009) and as the mentor to a corporate spy (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) in Nolan’s science-fiction thriller Inception (2010). Caine then provided voices for the animated films Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) and its sequel, Sherlock Gnomes (2018), and Cars 2 (2011). He played a stranded adventurer in the family-oriented Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) and portrayed a bamboozled insurance magnate in the heist spectacle Now You See Me (2013) and its 2016 sequel. Caine joined the ensemble cast of Nolan’s space drama Interstellar (2014) as a NASA scientist leading a team in search of a habitable planet in the wake of catastrophic war and famine on Earth. He turned to lighter fare with an appearance as a spymaster in the comic thriller Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014). Caine was lauded for the humility of his performance as a composer in Youth (2015), director Paolo Sorrentino’s paean to aging artists. He followed with a remake (2017) of the 1970s film Going in Style, playing a retiree planning a bank heist with his fellow pensioners.
Caine has published two volumes of memoirs, What's It All About? in 1992 and The Elephant to Hollywood in 2010.
Michael Caine is an internationally successful British actor renowned for his versatility in numerous leading and character roles. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, Caine has appeared in over 115 films, and is regarded as a British film icon. He is a beloved Oscar-winning actor known for his roles in films like Alfie, Hannah and Her Sisters and the latest Batman incarnations.
In 1993 Caine was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and he was knighted in 2000. In 2011 he was made Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, the highest cultural honour in France.
Caine has been nominated for an Oscar 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. His performance in Educating Rita in 1983 earned him the BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
In 2000 he received a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award. In 2008, Caine was awarded the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Showbusiness at the Variety Club Awards. In May 2012, Caine was awarded the Honorary Freedom of the London Borough of Southwark as a person of distinction and eminence of the borough.
Caine was brought up in his mother's Protestant religion.
As a Christian married to a Muslim, he says "no questions or issues ever come up" and describes his wife's beliefs as "very benign".
Politics
Caine has often been outspoken about his political views. He left the United Kingdom for the United States in the late 1970s, citing the income tax levied on top earners by the Labour government of James Callaghan, which then stood at 83%, but returned to the UK eight years later when taxes had been lowered by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.
Following the launch of his film Harry Brown, Caine called for the reintroduction of national service in the UK to give young people "a sense of belonging, rather than a sense of violence".
In 2009, Caine publicly criticised the Labour government of Gordon Brown for its new 50% income tax rate on top earners and threatened to return to the US if his taxes were increased further. During the run up to the 2010 General Election, Caine publicly endorsed the Conservative Party and appeared with party leader David Cameron for the launch of a civilian non-compulsory "National Service" for 16-year-olds, although Caine stated he had previously supported New Labour under the leadership of Tony Blair in 1997. In July 2014, Caine was reported to have been a celebrity investor in a tax avoidance scheme called Liberty. Caine also voted for Brexit, stating he would rather be a "poor master than a rich servant".
Views
Quotations:
"I didn’t go in search of some of my more questionable films. I was always on the lookout for the great roles. When they weren’t offered to me, I’d look for the good ones and when those passed me by, I’d take the ones that would pay the rent."
"I was named after my father and I was knighted in his name because I love my father. I always kept my real name—I'm a very private and family-orientated person."
"Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath."
"I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars."
"For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart."
"Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons."
"Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think."
"I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age."
"January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out."
Personality
Caine quit his 80-a-day cigarette habit in the early 1970s after a lecture by Tony Curtis.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
Caine is a fan of the sport of cricket.
Connections
Michael Caine was married to actress Patricia Haines from 1955 to 1962. They have a daughter, Dominique (who was named after the heroine of the novel The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand). 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. He called her every day for ten days until she finally agreed to meet him. They have a daughter, Natasha Haleema.
Father:
Maurice Joseph Micklewhite
Mother:
Ellen Maria Burchell
(1900-1989)
Spouse:
Shakira Caine
(born 23 February 1947)
Shakira, Lady Caine (née Baksh) is an Indo-Guyanese-British actress and fashion model, and the wife of English actor Sir Michael Caine.
Brother:
David Burchell
Brother:
Stanley Caine
(1935 – 13 January 2013)
Stanley Caine, born Stanley Victor Micklewhite, was an actor and the younger brother of actor Michael Caine.
ex-spouse:
Patricia Haines
(3 February 1932 – 25 February 1977)
Patricia Haines was an English actress, best known for her television work.
Sean Connery is a retired Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award).
Friend:
Roger Moore
(14 October 1927 – 23 May 2017)
Roger Moore was an English actor. He is best known for playing Ian Fleming's fictional British secret agent James Bond in seven feature films from 1973 to 1985.
