Here, sweet Lord, at your service.
Michael Caine is one of Britain's most successful movie stars.
Good night, sweet prince.
We've watched, as boyish good looks and curly blond hair have matured and aged.
Tell me again and again.
He's played a whole lifetime of roles.
Roles that range from Jack the lad...
You drop a tanner, look around, and what do you find?
Ruby!
..to fading geriatric. Oh!
Great performances, set over 50 years of change in the movies.
He's spent a lifetime on our screens.
Your life changes, buster.
Not always for the better.
He kind of made it possible for people like me
to be in films, or to be taken seriously.
If you can get Michael Caine in any part in your movie,
over the title, you've got box office.
It just seemed exactly right.
Michael looked, sounded, behaved, like a movie star.
He's been acting since before most of us were born.
We've watched him grow up to be a huge international star.
Now we can look back at the many faces of Michael Caine as they happened.
He's always very current.
He's moved with the century, I think, you know.
His development as a person, a human being and an actor
has developed as the century's gone on.
With a wife like Ruby, you wouldn't want
nothing on the side, you know what I mean?
GIGGLING
I think what his career has done is span an enormous number of different styles of film-making
and the evolution of cinema, both in Britain and in Hollywood.
That's the strength of his presence as an icon.
He represents so many different kinds of film-making.
There are other people, you know, Palmer. Why don't you try them?
Michael Caine is iconic because of the way he looks, the way he sounds, the way he acts.
He's like a national monument.
If there was a Mount Rushmore of Hollywood stars,
Michael Caine's face would be up there.
As a teenager, Caine already had an eye for the girls.
And it was the opposite sex that first drew him to the Clubland Youth Centre.
Here he discovered a new passion.
Right here is where I started.
The very first time, at the age of 14,
I came on to this stage to do a play called Rossum's Universal Robots.
I got very good reviews for the play.
Everybody thought I was marvellous in this play,
but what I must point out is what I was playing was a robot -
completely stiff, expressionless, with a flat voice,
and I came on, and of course I was really, really right in the part.
In the very early days of television, he took bit parts in plays that went out live.
His first ever appearance was in The Lark,
as a walk-on soldier, Boudousse.
Hey there, Boudousse.
Take her away and give her a ducking, and then lock her up.
You can send her back to her father tomorrow.
But no beating, I don't want any trouble, the girl's mad.
You can lock me up, my Lord, I don't mind that,
but when they let me out tomorrow evening I shall come back again.
It will be simpler if you let me talk to you now. Million thunders! Don't I frighten you?
No, my Lord. Not at all.
Well, get back to your post.
You don't need to stand here listening to this.
So that was Michael Caine's first television entrance, and later we actually hear him speak.
Boudousse.
I'll take her out and give her a ducking, sir.
No, you idiot. Fetch her some britches and bring a pair of horses, we're going for a gallop together.
But the council, sir, it's four o'clock. It can wait till tomorrow.
I've used my brains quite enough for today.
He spent ten, hard, penniless years as a minor actor,
but it wasn't his talent on stage that earned Michael Caine his ambition of being on the big screen.
It was his time in National Service, as a real-life soldier in Korea.
Well, A Hill In Korea was a very small-budget movie.
He wrote to them and said he had been in the Korean war, so they saw him.
He looked like a National Serviceman,
and his knowledge of the war in Korea,
he knew how the wear the uniform and things like that.
He got the job, and it was no skin off their nose
because it wasn't an important part, so he couldn't ruin anything.
We arrive in Portugal where we were shooting it,
go to the hotel,
and we see that Stanley Baker, George Baker and Harry Andrews have got a room each.
Small budget, you've all got to pair off and have a bedroom between two.
Michael and I ended up in a room.
He hadn't been to drama school.
He had no pretensions to Shakespeare or the grand theatre.
Here, tell you what.
Let's have this war out on Arsenal's ground.
Standard prices, our boys versus the Chinks.
Character actors like Victor Madden and Michael Medwin were in every bloody film, and it was all fixed.
Private Docker, the world's leading tank buster-upper.
It's 1956, and a classic British war film.
Stanley Baker takes on the entire Chinese army.
You dirty little yellow...
Things don't work out for Stanley's character.
Ugh!
But he does cue Michael Caine's big-screen debut. Pity.
He was the toughest bloke we'd got.
I used to see him in the pub, in the Salisbury,
where all out-of-work actors used to meet.
You know, we were all out of work, Sean Connery, all the lads,
and Michael was going up for Zulu.
Now the thing is that...
the snobbery of this country
was such that we hadn't quite got over
the Phyllis Calvert, Dulcie Gray syndrome
of where you had to say,
POSH VOICE: "Hello Harry, how are you?"
You couldn't be a leading player unless you spoke like that in those days.
You've seen all those old black-and-white movies.
Take a look at that hill beyond the village.
That jolly-looking building must be a temple.
Americans don't have that prejudice.
They rather like the Cockney voice,
and they don't see it in the class barrier way that the English do.
Whistle up the Korean. Kim!
Now what's cooking? Think I'll go home.
Not without you've plugged your ration of Chinks, Jackie.
It's what you were stood this lovely trip for.
There was no way that a Cockney actor could play a diplomat,
or a university professor in this country
until you're famous, and then, as a film producer said to me many years later,
"If you can get Michael Caine in any part in your movie,
"over the title, you've got box office."
That kind of success was still nearly ten years away.
Life was tough for Michael Caine, right through his 20s.
Then, at age 31, in 1964, Michael "Cockney" Caine got his break.
Stanley Baker, the actor he had met on A Hill in Korea,
arranged for Michael to meet producer Cy Endfield, who had a big project.
The screen test was actually terrible, and I think most screen tests are.
All you do is photograph somebody's fear, not their talent.
And any way, that was done on a Friday, and on a Saturday night
I went to a party, and quite by coincidence Cy Endfield was there,
and I thought, "Well, have I got the part or not?"
And he came in and he just said, "Good evening" and walked by.
And my eyes followed him all round the room, waiting for him to say something.
At least say, "You haven't got the part."
And he finally, he came up to me and he said,
"You did, yesterday, probably the worst screen test I've ever seen in my life."
He said, "Stanley Baker and I may be mad, but we're going to give you the part."
It was Zulu.
Caine looked the part of the English gentleman soldier, but there was still the issue of that accent.
I was nervous when I first did it, because your first film is always the most nerve-wracking.
I could probably do it better now.
I remember Cy Endfield, when he did the first take,
said "Cut", half way through the very first take, and he said,
"Michael, your voice has gone up about three octaves."
My voice was up here with nerves, and they could hardly record it,
and we had to start again and then I brought my voice down.
But what had happened was, everybody came out of the production offices
because they were sure this Cockney couldn't speak like that.
I was sitting on this horse, and I suddenly turned round and there was the entire crew -
office, people's staff, producers, everybody - who had never been on the set before,
just standing there staring at me, and I was sitting on this horse.
This is what threw me for the first take.
Bromhead.
24.
That's my post. Up there.
And nothing has ever thrown me on a take since, and I'm sure never will.
Lamps fall over and I still keep going straight through it, because I think I'm in live television
and no matter what happens, you've got to keep going till the end.
Just like his screen character,
Michael Caine the actor was transformed in Zulu.
This was his big break.
Sir! Are you all right?
Take...command.
Corporal!
Tell the professor...
Take command. Lance Corporal!
Now listen, old boy, you're not dying.
We need you. Damn you, we need you!
Zulu launched Michael Caine, but it didn't make him a millionaire.
He was tall, good looking, and at 31 years of age,
an actor with a big future.
James Bond producer Harry Saltzman saw a smart investment.
I was quite impoverished. I had made Zulu,
but I got paid £4,000 for Zulu,
and I was sort of broke at the end of it.
And so this was this incredible opportunity, and I mean,
the first year of the contract was £100,000 or something like that,
you know, which to me was like £12 million.
The Ipcress File is a highly stylised feature film.
A Cold War spy story.
Look out!
Reluctant and irreverent spy Harry Palmer is caught up in a web of double bluff and brainwashing.
Congratulations Palmer, you've just killed an American agent.
We wanted him to be the antithesis of Bond.
It obviously wasn't any competition for Bond.
It wasn't another great suave spy.
It was more like a real spy, an ordinary guy who you wouldn't look at twice in the street.
You know, that kind of thing.
Oh. Good morning, sir.
Champignons.
You're paying ten pence more for a fancy French label.
If you want button mushrooms, you'll get better value on the next shelf.
It's not just the label. These do have a better flavour.
Of course. You're quite a gourmet, aren't you, Palmer?
'When they saw the first rushes, he said "He's wearing glasses.'
"Is he short-sighted, does he have to wear glasses?" "No, that's part of the character."
He said, "Well, there's never been a leading man since Harold Lloyd who had glasses, and he was a comedian!"
Do you always wear your glasses?
Yes.
Except in bed.
'I saw Sean having a difficulty trying to get away from James Bond and I thought,'
the minute I take these off, it's not Harry Palmer, which proved correct.
And then they saw the rushes where I cook the meal for the woman.
And they went, "Everybody will say it's a fag! I mean, cooking.
"I mean, this is a fag, John Wayne wouldn't cook anything for anybody."
You're very professional.
Yes, so are you.
Harry said to me one day, "I'm putting your name above the title."
I said, "Do you think I was good in it?" He said, "No, it's just that
"if I don't think you're a star, who the hell else is going to?
"I'll put your name up there anyway."
Have you seen everything?
Yes.
I read this review, and I knew that I had a career in movies,
in leading characters, if not the star role.
And I knew I had a future, and I was 31,
and for the first time in my life, I knew I had a future in this business.
You have forgotten your name.
In truth, his name is Michael Caine, and no-one will forget his name.
Michael Caine.
His name was Michael Caine.
Even before the film was released, the buzz in London's film business said a star was born.
Americans became very interested
in this sort of working-class British persona,
and it was coming through coming through in music as well.
It's interesting that Michael Caine came through with his regional accent, his Cockney accent,
at the same time that The Beatles were the sort of iconic British people the world over,
with their Scouse accent. You also had Sean Connery with his unapologetic Scottish accent.
And the timing was perfect to unleash the Cockney accent in Alfie.
Going up in the world, in't I?
In his world of endless sexual encounters, women are disposable objects.
She's in lovely condition.
He is, you know, he's the living image of
that kind of new, confident man of the '60s,
a man who's embracing the permissive society,
is in no way a feminist, you know, not a progressive, not a radical,
but a man who's enjoying the fruits of that consumer culture,
and women are just another thing that he wants to eat and swallow up.
I remember seeing Alfie as a younger woman and feeling extremely angry and offended by it,
finding it very condescending, very unpleasant in the humour,
and the way it regards its female characters,
but having revisited it recently, I saw a real darkness there and a real complexity to his character
that I hadn't really caught the first time round.
You're a little sex pot, in't you? Am I?
His performance in it is interesting, because as well as the obvious laddish charm and sex appeal
that the film was sold on, there's a real vulnerability there,
and I think that's a very interesting element of his presence as a star
and as a sex symbol, is that there's something almost feminised about him.
There's a weakness always.
Even as simple a fact as wearing glasses as a leading man.
You see him cooking in The Ipcress File. You see him crying in Alfie.
These are sort of unusual things for a heroic male lead,
and I think what you see in Alfie is the sort of breakdown of a certain kind of masculinity.
Don't go in there.
He leaves a trail of emotional devastation in a story that shows up
the swinging '60s as being mainly a male creation.
He begins to realise it's a lifestyle that comes at a cost.
And nothing stays the same. Even in the movies.
He's younger than you are.
You got it?
Michael Caine's performance in Alfie won him an Oscar nomination.
It earned him influential friends and a place at the movie world's top table.
One of the most difficult things for a British actor to do is to get
a leading part in a Hollywood movie, opposite a major American star.
And I managed this.
I say I managed this. The reason I got this was because of the generosity
of Shirley MacLaine.
She was doing a film called Gambit,
and they said, "Who would you like in the movie?"
And I'd never met her, I'd never been to America, and suddenly I got a call one day and it said,
"You're in a movie with Shirley MacLaine. We'll send you the script."
I said, "Don't worry, I don't want to read it, I'll just come."
If you will read the magazine as I asked, you will see
that he does not make appointments because he is a recluse.
Well, then why does he want to see us?
A recluse doesn't see anybody, Harry.
A recluse... That's why.
That's why.
Who was this? His wife? Was his wife. She's dead.
You made me look like this dead lady.
Exactly, and when Shahbandar learns about you, we will be invited to meet him.
Hollywood is a very closed shop,
and the fact that Shirley MacLaine wanted Michael Caine
to come and be with her in Gambit
was an enormous opening for him. I mean, she could have picked anybody.
She was a wonderful star at the time.
Don't forget, her brother is Warren Beatty.
She was really in with the in crowd, and the fact that she had this
great knowledge and plucked him - I don't want to say from obscurity, but plucked him from the British milieu
was an enormous feat, I think, an enormous achievement for him.
And also, let's not forget why people are stars.
I mean, Michael Caine is iconic because of the way he looks, the way he sounds, the way he acts,
and Shirley MacLaine can pick a winner.
The '60s were a prolific time for Michael.
There were two more Harry Palmer films - Funeral In Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain -
but one film has unexpectedly become a classic.
It's a film with a line of dialogue that has become forever attached to Michael Caine.
You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!
The Italian Job celebrated London's swagger and style.
London at the time was, as everyone knows, it was the Swinging Sixties.
It was the time of Carnaby Street, it was the time of King's Road.
To me, it was just a barrel of laughs. We were going off to Turin.
At 22, I was going to Turin,
I was going to be paid per diems.
And I was going off for weeks to make this film,
and I only had one line, so I didn't have to stay completely sober.
I am going in the front, you are going in the back.
He says he wants to sit up in front with the driver!
I always get sick in the back. Listen, if I go in the back, I get my migraine, I'll be out like a light.
You are not going to be sick, you're not going to have your migraine,
and everybody is going to sit in the back of the motor.
Now I have to go back and look at it through the perspective of a 22-year-old actor.
His eyes are so wide-open and his jaw is so low in astonishment.
It was just watching Michael.
I mean, we were lumped together and we all did our job,
but every day Michael arriving in a Roller on the set, you know,
and don't forget, he also had his extraordinarily beautiful consort as well.
He was with Bianca at the time.
So, you know, and we're all...
But it just seemed exactly right.
Michael looked, sounded, behaved like a movie star.
The plan was that we stay here. The plan's changed.
But why, Charlie?
Why? Because you're a liability.
I don't think there was a buzz about The Italian Job, I think it was just another film,
and the genius of having Remy Julienne do those stunts with the Minis,
that was the masterpiece.
I mean, the film was a lovely film, very charming film,
but without the three minutes, it would have been just another caper film.
Hang on a minute, lads.
I've got a great idea.
He has this really great period in the mid to late '60s and the beginning of the '70s,
where he gets these parts that really speak to those precise historical moments.
You know, he gets to embody swinging London.
He gets to do kind of the colonial hero as well,
a really important figure in the '60s, you know, those uniforms, Sergeant Pepper.
People are thinking about empire in that period, and Britain's place in the world.
And then he gets to do Get Carter, which, if anything, if it's anything,
is a kiss goodbye to the carefree '60s and a sign that Britain is entering
a tougher, a more glacial kind of period.
You know, in that film, he's a sort of spirit of vengeance
who's sent up to the difficult, cold, grimy, violent North.
Goodbye, Eric!
This isn't the same country that Alfie takes place in.
It's an entire world away.
Open that door and go inside.
What are you going to do?
I'm going to sit in the car and whistle Rule Britannia.
You're coming back! How could I stay away?
Get Carter closed a chapter in Caine's career.
The world was changing, and so was the movie business.
In the '70s, television challenged cinemas for audiences.
Hollywood's answer was the epic, a film like The Man Who Would Be King,
a must-see movie event directed by the legendary John Huston.
Caine really hadn't been in any really, really massive epics in that particular decade,
and I think that starring as a one-two punch with Sean Connery and a cast literally of thousands
was an enormous step up for his career,
because this is the kind of film that Hollywood was making to challenge television.
You know, "We couldn't put this on in television, you have to come and see it on the big screen."
Michael Caine was now mixing with Hollywood's royalty
in roles first envisaged for Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart.
It was a long dream come true for even John Huston,
who had wanted to make the film many years ago. But if he'd done it,
then neither Michael Caine, nor Sean Connery, nor I would have been in it!
So the timing was right.
If they're that far back, there are not all these many people right up here, you see.
First and foremost, to work with Huston, I wanted to work with Huston.
I've always been a great admirer of his.
Also, of course, the part is marvellous,
it's a fabulous part to play,
and it's the type of film I wanted to be in,
and I think it's the type of film we basically should be making,
instead of, um...
kind of competing with Kojak or something,
which people can see for nothing.
You know, you've got to make... This is what I call a movie movie.
WHISTLE BLOWS How was it, Eric?
Not very good. How was it for you?
Not absolutely perfect all the way through. Once more, please!
GUNFIRE AND SHOUTING
WHISTLE BLOWS Well, was the shot no good, then? Ah...
the mules don't go over the side, that's what we're trying to do.
Nothing happened with the mules.
Not a goddamn thing happens with the mules.
It just looks strange that if they get in and then they turn around to shoot, we come in, we leave them,
the camera goes with us and it looks as though we're shooting them.
Well, let's do the same thing as come back up through them again.
Yeah. What's that?
Do you want us to come back up through them again? I think so,
because we left you at this end, you were the last two.
You just wait one jiffy!
Michael said to me, he said, "Saeed, I'm doing a film next year,
"I think there's a part in it that you'd be absolutely right for."
And he did mention my name to the producers,
but we still had to screen-test five other people and so on.
Rifleman Majendra Bahadur Gurung!
Known to my regiment as Billy Fish.
And we had this tall gay dresser
and I... He kept saying, "Billy Fish number one, coming up!
"Billy Fish number two, coming up!"
And I prayed to God, I said, "Please, God, give me the prayer
"so this guy learns to call us by our names and not Billy Fish number one, two and three!"
And God granted me the prayer, and I got the part.
SPEAK IN NATIVE LANGUAGE
He wants to know, are you gods?
Not gods, Englishmen, which is the next best thing.
I ofttimes tell Luther about Englishmens,
how they give names to dogs and take off hats to womans
and march into battle, "Left, right, left, right,"
with rifles on their shoulders!
Bringing enlightenment to the darker regions of the earth.
Michael was wonderful.
He said, "Saeed, if you play one of the leading roles in a movie,
"make sure you get to know the whole company by their first name,
"then the company feels like a family, and the work smiles on that screen."
Absolutely true.
Sean Connery realises his dream of being as rich as a king,
but his mortal desire leads to their undoing,
and they're forced to make a run for it.
They've twigged it, Danny, you've had it.
The gig's up!
I... For God's sake!
As the '70s gave way to the '80s, times continued to change
for the movie industry and for Michael Caine.
He even tries on lipstick and lingerie in Dressed To Kill.
It's a crucial time.
Now approaching 50, he enters a twilight zone
where starring roles in the Hollywood tradition become harder to find.
But British cinema offers interesting parts for a more mature man.
Caine says to me an interview once,
"I was handed a script and automatically I looked for
"the lover role and realised that it was quite short,"
then the director informed him, "No, we haven't cast you as the lover,
"we've cast you as the father figure, but it's a huge role."
That's when he realised, "OK, I may not get the girl any more in movies,
"it'll be passed on to a younger generation,
"but I'm still a really good actor, and I'll still get good roles."
It says here, "Mrs S White."
Ah, yes, that's S for Susan.
That's just my real name.
But I'm not a Susan anymore. I've changed my name to Rita.
You know, after Rita Mae Brown? No.
Rita Mae Brown, who wrote Rubyfruit Jungle.
No. Haven't you read it?
No. It's a fantastic book, you know. Do you want to lend it?
Er... Yes, yes.
Well, thank you very much. It's OK.
And what do they call you around here?
Sir.
But you may call me Frank. OK...Frank.
I was in Los Angeles. They said, "What are you going to do?"
I said, "I'm going to do something called Educating Rita,"
and they said, "Well, who else is in it?" I said,
"A girl called Julie Walters. "They said, "Who the hell is Julie Walters?"
I said, "She's very good, she's in the play,
"she's going to do the movie, and I'm going to do it with her."
He said, "Well, Educating Rita, that must be about Rita.
"What do you play in it?" "I play a guy called Frank."
He said, "Well, you should be doing a picture called Educating Frank
"if you're going to be a star in this."
Background action! Background action.
Action.
Right...
I've got your address in France, so I'll write to you every day.
So have a good holiday and don't drink too much, will you?
Educating Rita reunited Caine with the man who directed Alfie 16 years earlier, Lewis Gilbert.
Originally, I was doing this picture for an American company.
They wanted me to make it in America
and use somebody like Dolly Parton and make the thing American.
And I said, "Well, this is ridiculous, because it's just so English, that's its charm."
You wouldn't think of making Pygmalion or My Fair Lady in Brooklyn.
Did you actually manage to get any work done?
Work? We never stopped, lashing us with it, they were.
Another essay, lash, do it again, smack!
Another lecture, lash!
It was fantastic.
Frank, I could have stayed forever.
'Michael, you know, was a big film star to me.'
Now, of course, I know different.
No, you know, and so, yes, that did help the whole thing.
He's been great, he's been a real help
altogether, you know, off-screen as well been a great help.
LAUGHTER
Er...assonance!
Do you know... Do you know what assonance means? Eh?
It means getting the rhyme wrong!
LAUGHTER
It's terrible, isn't it?
Michael's acting in Educating Rita won a BAFTA.
His first major screen award had taken more than 25 years.
His approach has always been that film acting is more than an art.
It's a craft that can be learnt.
Take this speech, let me sit there, yeah?
I want to see someone who's... a slightly pitiful character.
He's not really in control of everything.
And he's trying to keep his head straight, which wants to go...
But he's got to keep... Because the last thing he's going to do is show this woman that he's drunk.
And it's a rather...pitiful character listening to her.
And drunks don't react fast.
If a normal man sat down in the armchair, he'd sit like this,
"Hello, how are you?" You've got a difference...
But a drunk, it's very small.
There is more poetry in the...telephone directory.
However...this has one advantage over the telephone directory.
It is easier to rip.
Why don't you just go away?
I don't think I can bear it any longer.
Can't bear what, Frank?
You, Rita...
You.
But after 20 years as a big-screen icon, he was, perhaps surprisingly,
tempted back to television for a dramatisation of the story of Jack the Ripper.
Caine plays Inspector Frederick Abberline.
Was he a surgeon, like yourself? Surgeons save lives, Inspector, not destroy them.
He's investigating the horrific murder and mutilation of London prostitutes.
Well, well, well!
It's loosely based on the true story of Jack the Ripper,
but in this version Caine unmasks the serial-killer...
You're going to introduce us! Now!
Fred! You'll hang!
..only to see his identity protected.
It had a good effect on his career, because people remembered how good he was.
They weren't going to some of his movies around that time, but they were seeing him on TV,
remembering how good he was and then casting him again for later movies. So it was important.
As any actor will tell you, and I'm sure he'll tell you as well, you have to keep working.
I think it's a characteristic of an actor who comes from a working-class background,
who regarded acting as a job, as a trade,
and who, on that basis, maybe never felt secure enough to say, "That part's not good enough for me."
I think he does now, I think now he can pick and choose
and do films that really speak to him and mean something to him,
but in the sort of middle part of his career, stardom isn't automatically conferred,
and even if it seems to be, it doesn't just last, you have to keep working, working, working.
And I think he was always conscious of not dropping out of view
and always conscious of keeping the money coming in.
He's fortunate, not that he doesn't deserve it, but he's been fortunate
to enjoy the experience of going in and out of fashion,
of being lost and reclaimed, of having a late period and an early period and a middle period.
Not a lot of actors get to do that.
As the 20th century draws to a close, the Harry Palmer character
from The Ipcress File is brought out of retirement for Bullet To Beijing and Midnight In St Petersburg.
Michael Caine himself qualifies for a free bus pass just at the time
he spots a unique opportunity in a low-budget British film.
He probably never expected to be offered a romantic lead role at age 65.
When I heard Michael Caine was going to be playing opposite me,
I was a bit apprehensive, you know, because up until that...
He was the biggest name I'd ever worked with, and not only that, it was kind of a physical role,
I had to pounce on him and kiss him, so I was a bit nervous of working with him.
Here he is, Mr Ray Say!
Sting Ray, Ray Gun, my very own Ronnie Ray Gun!
Oh, I'm just into him so!
Caine's character, Ray Say, is a small-time impresario who discovers
his new girlfriend's daughter has a fabulous singing talent.
He throws all his money and what's left of his reputation into making her a star.
The one, the only,
Little Voice, ladies and gentlemen!
Little Voice!
APPLAUSE AND FEEDBACK
Go on!
I thought he might have wanted the whole focus of attention...
um, being such a big star, but he wasn't like that at all.
He was...interested in making the scene work, the same as I was, the same as everybody was.
Oh! Bingo. Let there be light.
But you want to get this lot seen to, you know. It could bring the house down.
I was actually in the play of Little Voice, which was called
The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice,
so Jane and I were the only two folk who moved
from the play into the film, and...
I actually skipped around my living room when I heard it was Michael Caine who was going to be Ray Say.
# Burn, baby, burn
# Burn it!
# To my surprise... #
DOORBELL
To be honest, I liked all my scenes with him,
because they just felt totally organic.
There's a scene at the nightclub when she first meets him
when Mr Boo introduces them, and they're sort of
smooching on the floor to the slow music.
It just kind of fitted, it just...
There was... It was totally into the characters, and it really worked.
She's not what you'd call a performer, I'll grant you that,
but I can take care of that.
She just needs a big band or something to boost her confidence.
I love it when you talk swanky.
When I could see what Michael Caine was doing, I thought,
"This is so unlike anything I've seen him do,"
and he was quite brilliant.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Michael was very...
He's a very...concentrated and self-possessed man
but had absolute enthusiasm for the film and the story
and the other actors.
I had something... ladies and gentlemen.
I had something really special.
When he sings that song at the end of Little Voice, I thought it was absolutely heartbreaking.
At first, he was quite reluctant.
When they told him he's got to sing a song, I don't think he was that keen.
He kept saying, "No, no, no, I'm not a singer."
They said, "No, but we want you to put your own spin on it, Ray Say's spin on it."
# It breaks your heart in two... #
He wasn't very confident about it, but then, when it came to doing it,
he just did it, and it blew everybody away, it was heartbreaking.
# It's over! #
He hadn't been allowed or invited, or the opportunity hadn't come along
for him to play that pain previously,
and I think...
..that was radical for him and wonderful for us as an audience.
The adorable Mr Ray Say, ladies and gentlemen, with a little song
about his showbusiness career, called It's Over.
Little Voice won Michael Caine a Golden Globe.
Many thought he should have had an Oscar.
Surprisingly, in such a long career, he has won just two -
best supporting actor in The Cider House Rules
and best supporting actor for the comedy Hannah And Her Sisters.
It was interesting, because it was a Woody Allen movie,
and you don't always associate Michael Caine with Woody Allen,
who always makes these New York stories with New Yorkers, generally.
Caine comes along, and he was terrifically cast.
He played Mia Farrow's husband, but he was having an affair with Mia Farrow's sister,
played by Barbara Hershey.
JAZZ PLAYS
You can take pictures? Sure, when we get to the country.
OK. Yeah, OK!
He's holding his own against Woody Allen's normal ensemble troupe.
He has the people he's used to working with, actors who he knows a lot about,
and there was Caine, who was very much the outsider when he started.
But he dominates the movie. Even when he's not in the scenes, you're aware of Michael Caine.
What are you not telling me? What kind of interrogation...?
Supposing I said yes, I am disenchanted, I am in love with someone else. Are you?
No!
And Caine understood straightaway, he knew this man, he knew he was hurting the Mia Farrow character,
but he was absolutely drawn to the Barbara Hershey character, and couldn't help it.
He was a man in torment, so had all these mixed emotions in the movie,
and because of that, I think it was well deserved that Caine won the Oscar for that movie.
Sadly, he wasn't there to collect it, because he was in the Bahamas shooting Jaws: The Revenge,
for his ten days for his one million pay cheque.
When an actor isn't awarded an Oscar for what he should have been awarded for,
they'll give it to him for something else, and this is the history.
John Wayne got it for this when he should have got it for this, it happens over and over again.
And I think that Michael Caine really
was awarded those two Oscars for his body of work,
for his iconic appearances in films that they couldn't have given him an Oscar for.
"A dog, which had lain concealed till now,
"ran backwards and forwards on the parapet
"with a dismal howl, and collecting himself for a spring,
"jumped on the dead man's shoulders.
"Missing his aim, he fell into a ditch, turning completely over as he went
"and, striking his head against a stone,
"dashed out his brains."
That is the end of the chapter.
Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.
Oscar is very political, so you can watch The Cider House Rules if you want to,
and you can watch Hannah And Her Sisters,
but really we all know the Michael Caine movies we want to watch and should watch,
and it's not those two.
He doesn't tend to do that kind of hair-tearing, weighty acting that the Academy, for instance, likes best,
so maybe that's why it wasn't the best-actor roles that he got nominated for,
and I know that he's been a little bit cross about that.
He has been nominated for an Oscar in every decade from the '60s to now,
and he's the only person apart from Jack Nicholson who that applies to,
which is pretty astonishing. Never mind if it's supporting, who cares?
But who cares indeed?
He bagged the biggest award of his career, becoming Sir Michael Caine, at a Millennium ceremony.
Rejuvenated, he launched himself into a new century with quirky roles in big Hollywood films,
among them Miss Congeniality, Austin Powers and Batman.
The charm of his role in Batman is that he's kind of going, "What on earth is going on?"
And in Inception as well, he's the sort of person who is outside of the magic, commenting on it,
which is a great thing for an older actor to embody.
But also, these kind of slightly more aggressive, powerful older men,
like the one that he played in Harry Brown, where he's bringing a sort of heroism to it -
well, a debatable heroism in that case.
But maybe an older man who is not passive, who is not going gently into the good night,
but who is retaining a bit of fire and spark.
People talk a lot about women's roles drying up as they get older,
and the sexuality leaving and only getting to play mothers and people with Alzheimer's,
and the thing is that that applies to men as well.
It's difficult to find really juicy roles as an ageing actor.
What's great about Michael Caine is that he has such across-the-board affection and respect
that he is in a position to blaze a trail for the older actor, not going into obvious directions.
So there's a real range in the work that he's been doing lately.
I think that's very interesting and inspiring for other actors as well,
that it doesn't have to stop once you stop getting the girl.
But if anyone thought Michael Caine was coasting into retirement with comfortable cameo roles,
two low-budget British movies cast him in a new and different light.
He is being rediscovered by a young generation of film-makers.
In Harry Brown, it's as if Caine has come full circle,
back to his home territory in east London
as an old man who has seen military service.
I was very excited about the fact
that the person I thought would be best for the part
was interested in playing the part, and I was going to meet
one of my heroes, if you like. And he really is.
I mean, ever since I was a kid, I've grown up watching his films
that we all love, you know, Zulu, Alfie, The Italian Job and so on.
He is, in my opinion, one of the world's great actors
and someone who's worked with some of the world's greatest directors,
as he kept reminding me as we were making the film! All the time!
So we had some interesting discussions.
You know, at the end of the day, as he said to me when I first met him,
"I'll have a lot of ideas, but you'll pick the good ones out,
"and at the end of the day I'll do exactly what you say because you're the director, the boss."
I'm scared, Harry.
I'm... I'm scared all the time.
God in heaven.
What are you doing with that?
You should talk to the police.
I'll tell you what, we'll go together.
I've already been to the police.
It's about an old man who lives on a council estate in London,
or somewhere in England, but it's kind of London,
in the Elephant and Castle, which is actually very close to where he actually grew up as a boy.
And, you know, like a lot of pensioners, they serve their country
at one point or another during the war, and he has...very few friends.
And one of his friends get killed, unfortunately, gets murdered.
HE SOBS
The murder of his best friend is the last straw for Harry Brown.
He looks around his world and sees a place and people he doesn't recognise.
It's not the world he fought for. The police are ineffective.
So old Harry, a man with nothing to lose,
decides to take matters into his own hands.
What was brilliant, for me, about him was that he was so very interested
in becoming the part and not being Michael Caine,
and that's very refreshing for a star, you know,
to actually want to become something else and also to be able to become someone else.
It's not as easy as it sounds, you know, to define yourself
as a pensioner, as someone who has nothing, as opposed to the man we all know him to be,
which is a very wealthy and fabulous person, a star, you know.
It's a film about one man's beliefs and struggle
and what he's prepared to do about it. In truth, there's a lot of examples in the newspapers every day,
where normal people feel that they stand up and want to do something about what's going on around them,
whether it's the kids on their street that throw stones at their windows
or jump on their cars, whatever it happens to be.
More and more of us are willing to stand up and go, "No, actually, we don't think that's right."
He goes to, um... to see a couple of guys,
and...he tries to get hold of a gun,
and he gets embroiled in this whole situation.
I was very interested in really building up the tension and helping us to understand what it would feel
if a normal person ended up in a place like this, with those kind of people.
KNOCK ON DOOR
If you look at the choices he has made in the lower-budget films
he's been involved with, not Batman and stuff like that,
like Little Voice, Educating Rita, lower-budget films, if you like,
he makes good choices.
You have failed to maintain your weapon, son.
I think what Michael Caine has right now is a glorious late period.
I think that actually this is one of the most enjoyable periods
in the life of any actor who's lucky enough to have one.
You know, we now see Michael Caine in a slightly kind of ruinous condition.
You know, he's like a national monument that's slightly encrusted with moss.
We all remember him being young and beautiful in the '60s,
with those piercing, brilliant blue eyes,
and now he's like this... you know, this great beast,
slightly kind of tumbledown,
but incredibly impressive still.
And he has a frightening kind of power.
This is temporary.
For a completely different take on growing old, another British film, Is There Anybody There?
This is only...temporary.
OK.
The story goes that Shakira, his wife, read it first,
handed him the script and said, "You're doing this one."
And he read it and cried and said yes.
I met him two weeks later, and that was it, it was a very quickly done...done deal.
"On Christmas Day, Arnold Doughty, 90, went blue and died.
"So far, there has been no communication from him."
LAUGHTER
Well, I played Edward, who was a young boy who was quite morbid
and interested in ghosts and the afterlife and...
It was basically a story about this young boy meeting Clarence,
who was an old, retired magician played by Michael Caine.
And it's a relationship of... the boy teaching the...the, er...
the old man, Clarence, to sort of let go and...
..realise that it's almost the end of his life,
and almost Clarence teaching the boy about life
and how to enjoy it, how to make friends.
HORN BLARES
What do you think you're playing at?!
I could have killed you!
Oi! Come here!
It was an amazing time, really.
I hadn't really done much before that, so I wasn't very...experienced
and I didn't really know much about the whole filming process.
And I think working with Michael Caine was, one, a privilege
and, two, a very educational time, I learnt a lot from him.
I used to have a room with Paddington Bear wallpaper.
Yeah? Well, I used to have a beautiful wife and all my own teeth!
Your life changes, buster. And not always for the better.
You accumulate regrets, and they stick to you like old bruises.
It's a black comedy in the truest sense, you know, which is to say that
you're laughing at things which are rather uncomfortable, to do with notions of ageing and dying.
And that's not really the stuff
that you expect to see a film icon involved in,
especially one who was as handsome as he was.
You don't expect to see Alfie in a retirement home, and in a way
that was part of what was amazing about what Michael loaned to the film, actually,
is his iconography.
Hello, Bridget.
He's a supreme craftsman,
and he doesn't wax lyrical about the process or about it as an art.
For him, he's like a great craftsman.
BLOWS RASPBERRY
GIRL SCREAMS Aaargh!
He made you feel very comfortable,
and the fact that he sort of almost trusted you and, you know, believed in you was quite nice,
the fact that he didn't feel he needed to really teach me.
I picked up things on my own, and...
I guess he had quite a lot of trust,
and it was nice to work like that, because it made you comfortable
and you could sort of believe in your role and things more.
Let me tell you a secret.
Being a person is a pain in the arse.
No, it's not!
Yes, it is!
Clarence? What?
If you die, will you come back and see me?
Jesus wept!
He's an extremely pleasant man on set,
but he was...nervous and prickly in a way that suggested
he was building up to something emotional, shall we say.
And, um...we rehearsed it,
but you can't really rehearse a scene like that, and he's a smart enough actor
to know that you don't spend your emotion in a rehearsal, you need to save it.
It was a freezing cold day and, you know,
there was going to be a limit to the amount of times he could do it.
And he did it in two takes, and it was early in our relationship,
and I knew on the second take he had absolutely nailed it, I thought it was wonderful.
You don't come back, son!
Once they've gone, you can't talk to them!
If I could just say to her, "I'm sorry," if I could tell her I was bloody sorry,
what a difference that would make.
I pushed it and said, "Come on, let's go for one more,"
and he valiantly looked at me and nodded and went, "OK,"
and gave it his best shot, but it wasn't as good.
He knew in that second take that he had nailed it emotionally, and that
the first take was, for once, for him,
like getting a foothold in the scene emotionally, and the second take,
he cracked it wide open, and we used all of that take in the film.
She divorced me. Who?
Annie.
I-I wouldn't settle down, I couldn't keep it in me trousers, know what I mean? I was...
I was a good-looking fella.
Then one day, I-I came back home and she'd...
Quite surprising to see an actor like Michael,
who is also famous for his minimalism and for his containment as an actor,
being that raw and being that vulnerable
and being able to do it in a way that still doesn't look like acting.
He's... He's always Michael Caine somewhere in the middle of the role,
which is one of the strengths of him as a film star.
You could say that it's the strength of most film stars, there's always
one bit of themselves, they never fully lose themself in the role.
Ta-ta for now.
It could almost have been Caine's career epitaph
and made for uncomfortable viewing at the first screening.
I think the thing that hit him very hard was how upset his wife, Shakira, was,
because she was sitting next to him and it was a small screening room.
It was seven months since he had finished shooting the film,
and you sort of forget, you move on, and I think he was not quite ready for himself,
for what he had given us in the film emotionally.
And I think it really upset him that...
..that his wife was upset because she saw him dying in the film
and that she had never seen him die in a film in that way.
And he said, "Oh, I've been in loads of films where I've been shot."
She said, "No, this is different, here you age and die visibly in front of me,"
and I think that was quite shocking to him.
He's this immovable object at the heart of cinema.
He's much more important, in a way, than any of the films that he made.
What the hell do you think you're playing at?! The amazing thing about
Michael Caine is that he can reach out to a large audience.
BLOWS RASPBERRY
GIRL SCREAMS
Aaaargh!
Any director that works with him will be very lucky, really, and I'd love to work with him again,
and I've told him that, and he's said he's happy to do that,
um...as long as I can get some dosh for him.
Blimey!
No, he's not really money-led.
He's been on our screens for five decades.
He's been Oscar-nominated for each of those decades.
He is an iconic figure in the movies.
First and foremost, he's a terrific actor. That's what makes Michael Caine a star.
I think, when Michael did Little Voice, he again gave us something new,
and so his career took off again.
I'm just into him so!
And it's still going.
Good night, Bertha.
Good night, George.
Well, chin-chin!
Do carry on with your mud pie.
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