Michael Caine stars in "Youth." The Associated Press-
By Jake Coyle
The Associated Press
Posted Dec. 2, 2015 at 2:00 PM
NEW YORK — Michael Caine sits down for lunch at the St. Regis Hotel in midtown New York clutching a copy of the day's Daily News given to him by the hotel doorman, who's earmarked a photo of Caine and his "Youth" co-star Jane Fonda.
"You wonder why I stay here," he chuckles. "I always remember the sort of joke thing in the British paper where the journalist said to the duchess, `What's the best restaurant in London?' And she said, 'Where you're known, dear.' And I apply that to a lot of what I do."
Caine, 82, is known just about everywhere. Some know him as the star of British classics like "Alfie," "The Italian Job" and "Get Carter."
Others know him as Batman's butler (and a regular of just about every Christopher Nolan movie). Some might even know him just by the ubiquitous impressions of his indelible cockney accent, like Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's dueling Michael Caines in "The Trip."
In Paolo Sorrentino's "Youth," which opens Friday in select cities, Caine puts a capstone on a career that has traveled from working-class upstart to cinema institution. Like most things in life, he's enjoying it.
Working now and then, Caine lives relatively quietly, focused on his family; he and his wife, Shakira Baksh, are moving from their updated barn outside London, so their 25-minute drive to their grandchildren can be cut down to 5. But he's also soaking up the adulation for his aged classical composer in "Youth," which some think could land him his sixth Oscar nomination.
"I've been nominated (for best actor) four times and I have never won," he says, smiling. "I fly for 11 hours to clap another actor and then go home. It's a long way! So I'm not exactly clearing shelves. I've got two Oscars, anyway."
Sorrentino, the Italian director of the Oscar-winning "The Great Beauty," wanted Caine for his combination of authority and levity — a description that hits on Caine's unique blend of good cheer and gravitas. Caine first struck Sorrentino in Woody Allen's "Hannah and her Sisters": "When I saw that, I thought: I would like to be like Michael Caine in life."
Wouldn't we all. Though Caine doesn't share his character's melancholy or regret he's similarly reflective a two-time memoirist and an eager, colorful storyteller. "They say I'm a raconteur but what are you going to do?" he said. "There are stories to tell."
ON RETIREMENT
"What am I going to do? Sit around and watch soaps on television all day? That's why I never retired. I retire mentally every time. I regard myself retired now. I don't have another script to do, so I'm retired. I always had this phrase that I said many times to reporters: You don't retire in movies. Movies retire you. (AP: Yet they're not.) That's the point. I retire and they say, "Oh, no you're not."
ON FIGHTING IN KOREA
"In Korea, I got into a situation where I knew I was going to die. There were four of us. You always worry that you may be a coward. The four of us found out two things that night. One, that none of us were cowards. And that our attitude to life was that we will make this as expensive as possible."
ON HIS BREAKTHROUGH
"'Alfie' was a stage play which I auditioned for and never got. I was the last choice of anybody. I shared a flat with Terence Stamp and he was offered 'Alfie.' I spent two days trying to talk him into doing it. Laurence Harvey, Anthony Newley were offered it. Funny enough, everyone turned it down because there was an abortion sequence in it. It was the first time I was nominated for an Oscar. But I had seen Paul Scofield in 'A Man for All Seasons,' so I didn't even bother to turn up."
ON COMING TO HOLLYWOOD
"The first party I went to in Hollywood, Shirley MacLaine gave to welcome me to Hollywood. The first people to walk in were Gloria Swanson and Frank Sinatra. I was dumbstruck. Then she took me to dinner at Danny Kaye's house. There were only two other people there. One was Cary Grant and the other one was Prince Philip. I'm sitting there. I've been in Hollywood for three weeks. I took Shirley home. She lived in the Valley. As we got near to her home, I said, 'Look! Your house is on fire.' She said, 'Michael, that's steam from the pool.'"
ON TURNING DOWN ALFRED HITCHCOCK"I knew Hitchcock. We were from the same area, Londoners. When I first went to Hollywood for 'Gambit,' my bungalow at Universal was next to his. We became friends. Then when he offered me 'Frenzy,' he asked me to play a sadistic murderer of women and I wouldn't do it. And he never spoke to me again."
ON BATMAN AND HIS GRANDSON
"We have very much a father-and-son relationship. When he was about four, I was watching cartoons with him. And a commercial for "Batman" came on, and he looked at me and he went, 'You know Batman?' I said, `Yeah' and he said, `Wow, that's fantastic.'"
ON POOL SCENE OF `YOUTH' WITH A NAKED BEAUTY MODEL
"Paolo never told us about that, you know. He said to Harvey (Keitel) and me, `Get in the pool. There's no dialogue.' He said `Action!' and Madalina (Ghenea) walked in. Well that's the best acting you've ever seen on our faces because that's absolute reality."
ON IMPROVISING ON `YOUTH'
"I had this habit of saying another funny line, which is just stupid. It's not going to be in the movie, but just to get a laugh. I'll do anything to get a laugh. But there was one where my daughter (Rachel Weisz) was sitting crying behind me and I couldn't see her. I just said, `Stop crying.' And he left it in the movie. I like relaxation on a set, so I'm always going for a laugh. I can't act in a tense atmosphere."
ON PLAYING OLDER PARTS
"I had had great success in movies. I had done 61, 62. And I got a script and I sent it back to the producer with a note saying I didn't want to do it, the part was too small. And he sent it back with a note saying, 'I didn't want you to read the lover. I wanted you to read the father.' That's when, as I like to say, you stop getting the girl, but you get the part."
ON ONE SIMILARITY WITH HIS 'YOUTH' CHARACTER
"There's a scene at the doctor's where I go to see the results of my exam and he says to me: 'What's it like feeling old?' And what struck me is the line I said to him, which is: 'I don't understand how I got here.' Six years ago I was 35. How the hell have I gotten to be 82? A reporter once said to me, 'How do you feel about growing old?' And I said to him, 'Well, considering the alternative, fabulous.'"
Saturday 26 March 2016
Michael Caine reflects on 'Youth'
Michael CaineBiography
Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen
Frances Marie (Burchell), a charlady, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a
fish-market porter. He left school at 15 and took a series of
working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea
during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England
he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage
manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking
it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny
(1954). In the years that followed he worked in more than 100
television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and
eventually in the stage hit, "The Long and the Short and the Tall." Zulu
(1964), the 1964 epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in
South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine
to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking
Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although
"Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie
(1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the
new breed of actor in mid-'60s England, the working-class bloke with
glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in
some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter
(1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for
the money he could by then command. There were some gems amongst the
dross, however. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed.
Monday 14 December 2015
Definitive Michael Caine Movies We look back at the roles that have helped mold the Youth star's career.
A film and television fixture for decades, Michael Caine
is one of Hollywood’s best and brightest (he’s earned an Oscar
nomination at least once a decade since the 1960s), with an incredible
list of credits as a leading man and a supporting player — and even a
few minor roles, like his brief appearance in 2006’s Children of Men.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Caine’s also a published author, a
chillout DJ, and a knight of the Order of the British Empire — and now,
thanks to the debut of his latest film, Youth,
he can add “subject of a Rotten Tomatoes Total Recall” to his list of
accomplishments. Let’s take a look at Michael Caine’s definitive roles!
Caine scored his first starring role in this Cy Endfield production,
which told the story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift during the late 19th
century Anglo-Zulu War. The culmination of a long and bitter border
dispute, the war ultimately added another bloody chapter to British
colonialism in the region, but not without months of the kind of
struggle dramatized in Zulu — and the efforts of soldiers like
lieutenants John Chard (played by Stanley Baker, who also produced) and
Gonville Bromhead (played by Caine), who threw together a makeshift fort
to make a desperate stand against the opposition. Though barely a
footnote in American history books, Rorke’s Drift produced a number of
decorated veterans for the British Army — and an early critical triumph
for its freshly minted star. “Caine was just splendid,” applauded Dennis
Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews. “It is still one of his finest
hours in film.”
Caine made his first — and, critically speaking, his best —
appearance as Len Deighton’s rumpled spy Harry Palmer in this 1965
thriller, which gave fans of cinematic espionage a slightly more
realistic alternative to James Bond. Emphasis on the slightly:
Although Harry had to contend with more bureaucratic red tape (and got
to play with fewer gadgets) than 007, his adventures still included a
few of the fanciful elements that make a good spy yarn, like The Ipcress File‘s
high-tech tape recordings and brainwashing baddies. Caine went on to
play Palmer in two sequels and a pair of made-for-TV movies, but Ipcress was the one that helped him break out as a leading man: As Angie Errigo of Empire noted, “Caine, Zulu under his belt and Alfie
ahead, is the cheeky working class but aspirational bright spark hero
par excellence, captured at the exact moment he became a star.”
The quintessential swinging ’60s film, Alfie is undeniably a product of its time, and it can admittedly be hard to watch it in 2015 without thinking of Austin Powers
or wincing at the dated lingo and/or fashions. But this adaptation of
the Bill Naughton novel remains a classic for many reasons, chief among
them Michael Caine’s impressively nuanced, Oscar-nominated performance
in the title role. Alfie Elkins is a cad, plain and simple, but Caine
made audiences root for him anyway by giving them glimpses of his
humanity — and not only in the few scenes where he was called upon to
show some real emotion, but throughout the entire film, as he slowly,
subtly took the character on a journey from callow bachelor to… well, less
callow bachelor. As Dan Lybarger put it in his review for Nitrate
Online, “Caine’s terrific performance makes a viewer almost forget that
the film is actually a condemnation of its character’s swinging
lifestyle.”
A stark, unflinching portrait of the lingering stain that violence can leave on a person’s life — even after they’re dead — Get Carter
repulsed many critics when it was released, but behind all that ugly
violence lurks a film whose sharp script, strong performances, and
surprisingly thoughtful themes are impossible to ignore. The critics
eventually came around, too; over time, Carter has come to be
regarded as one of the best gangster movies ever made — and even one of
Britain’s best films overall. In another actor’s hands, the role of the
vengeful Jack Carter would have been a thuggish cartoon, but Caine
infused his character’s homicidal rampage with palpable pain and sorrow.
(For an example of how it could have gone wrong, watch Sylvester
Stallone’s 2000 remake, which featured Caine in a supporting role. Or
better yet, don’t.) He’d earned praise for earlier roles, but Caine
really started coming into his own here; as Roger Ebert noted in his
review, “Caine has been mucking about in a series of potboilers,
undermining his acting reputation along the way, but Get Carter shows him as sure, fine and vicious — a good hero for an action movie.”
Caine went toe to toe with Laurence Olivier in this adaptation of the Anthony Shaffer play, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve).
A seriously impressive pedigree, and it paid off on the screen: Caine
and Olivier were the only credited actors in the movie, and Sleuth earned them both Best Actor nominations — something that had, to that point, happened only once before (the first? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). As with a lot of stage adaptations, Sleuth
is extremely dialogue-heavy, but with actors this talented, that helps;
over the course of its two hours-plus running time, the complicated
rivalry between nobleman Andrew Wyke (Olivier) and struggling
businessman Milo Tindle (Caine) deepens with every line. It’s such a
rich story, Caine actually took Olivier’s role for Kenneth Branagh’s
2007 remake, starring opposite Jude Law. “It’s one of those works built
around a gimmick that in fact requires a little cheating on the part of
the filmmakers in order to succeed,” wrote Ken Hanke of the Asheville
Mountain Xpress. “But it’s a good gimmick.”
John Huston waited more than 20 years to finish this adaptation of
Rudyard Kipling’s short story about a pair of adventurers and their
exploits in a remote Afghan village, trying to cast a succession of
rugged duos (from Bogey and Clark Gable to Robert Redford and Paul
Newman) before finally finding his leading men in Caine and Sean
Connery. Blending anti-imperialist themes with swashbuckling escapism, The Man Who Would Be King
charts the rise and fall of Peachy Carnehan (Caine) and Danny Dravot
(Connery) as they dupe an Afghan village into thinking they’re gods,
only to find that the natives aren’t quite as credulous as they seem. It
was, in short, a slice of good old-fashioned adventure during a time
when it had fallen out of favor — making King, in the words of Cole Smithey, “A must for every 10-year-old boy.”
Woody Allen lined up one of his strongest ensemble casts for the seven-time Academy Award nominee Hannah and Her Sisters,
starring Caine as Elliot, the restless husband of Hannah (Mia Farrow)
whose dissatisfaction with his marriage leads him into an entanglement
with — you guessed it — Hannah’s sister (Barbara Hershey). It’s the kind
of story Allen tells best, and Hannah is one of his strongest —
and most successful — films, ultimately winning a Best Writing Oscar to
go with its healthy $40 million gross. “No matter how passive a viewer
you are, how much you attempt to dismiss it or judge its characters,”
wrote Steven Snyder for Zertinet Movies, “Woody Allen reaches past those
sleepy, cynical, or questioning eyes and makes you think as much as any
film I’ve seen.”
Writer/director Neil Jordan scored one of his earliest critical hits with 1986’s Mona Lisa,
starring Bob Hoskins as George, an ex-con who is manipulated by his
former boss, a gangster named Mortwell (Caine), into a relationship with
a prostitute (Cicely Tyson) so Mortwell can take advantage of her
“professional” connection to a rival. Caine is in singularly sleazy form
here, but it was Hoskins, in a rare starring role, who walked away with
a pile of trophies, including a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, and an
Oscar nomination. Part love story, part grisly mobster drama, Mona Lisa
didn’t make a ton of money at the box office, but it did earn the
admiration of critics like ReelViews’ James Berardinelli, who wrote, “In
an era when movies about love almost always invariably devolve into
formulaic affairs, Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa stands out as an often-surprising, multi-layered achievement.”
The first time Hollywood took a crack at adapting Graham Greene’s
bestselling novel, the result was a bowdlerized version that, much to
his chagrin, stripped out the author’s distaste with American
involvement in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, director Phillip Noyce
filmed a much more faithful adaptation, starring Brendan Fraser as an
idealistic CIA operative in 1950s Vietnam, Michael Caine as the jaded
British journalist who crosses his path, and Do Thi Hai Yen as the woman
who comes between them. What Noyce’s version lost in timeliness, it
more than made up in script and cast — most notably Caine, who earned a
Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his work and was singled out in
reviews from critics such as Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. “Caine, who also starred in one other Greene
adaptation, 1983’s The Honorary Consul, is the essence of
almost all the author’s misfits, ” wrote Gillespie, summing him up as “a
practiced cynic masking an aching romantic.”
Bruce Wayne might be an unimaginably wealthy businessman who lives a
double life as the crime-purging vigilante Batman, but he wouldn’t be
able to get much done without the dependable service of his
long-suffering butler, Alfred Pennyworth — and when Christopher Nolan
took over the franchise with 2005’s Batman Begins, he turned to
Caine to embody the character with his unique ability to project an
aura of good breeding, street smarts, and a quick, understated wit.
Though not one of Caine’s larger roles, Alfred is an integral part of
the Batman mythos, and his part in the franchise placed him alongside
talented actors such as Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, and Heath Ledger
— whose bravura performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight was
a crucial element in the positive reviews the movie earned from critics
like Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, who wrote, “Pitched at the
divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, The Dark Knight goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind.”
Zulu (1964) 93%
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The Ipcress File (1965) 100%
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Alfie (1966) 100%
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Get Carter (1971) 89%
Sleuth (1972) 96%
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The Man Who Would Be King (1975) 96%
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Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) 93%
Watch Trailer
Mona Lisa (1986) 97%
Watch Trailer
The Quiet American (2003) 87%
Watch Trailer
The Dark Knight Trilogy
the articles or the Michael Caine
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 is perhaps the only constant among performances that include cynical secret agents, gregarious playboys, rugged adventurers, refined gentlemen, humble schoolteachers, and psychotic killers. His star quality is not sacrificed for such versatility, and he retains his affable Cockney persona in most roles. He is especially deft at light comedy and usually manages 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. “I didn’t go in search of some of my more questionable films,” he once said, “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.”
His better films of the 1980s include 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 include 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 Cars 2 (2011) and played a stranded adventurer in the family-oriented Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012). He 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. Caine turned to lighter fare with an appearance as a spymaster in the comic thriller Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014).
Caine authored several best-selling books. Acting in Film (1987) is considered an invaluable resource for actors, and his memoirs What’s It All About? (1993) and The Elephant to Hollywood (2010) affirm his reputation as a gifted raconteur. In 1993 Caine was made Commander of the British Empire, 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.
Saturday 5 September 2015
Michael Caine Rediscovers Youth In New Trailer
Michael Caine's upcoming slate includes Vin Diesel's The Last Witch Hunter and the sequel toNow You See Me, but while he's keeping busy in elder-statesman roles, it looked as if 2009's Harry Brown was his final film as the lead. Happily that turned out not to be the case, since he couldn't resist Paolo Sorrentino's Youth. You can get a taste of the results in this just-released new trailer.
"I've retired about 30 times," Caine told Empire recently. "I always retire and then someone comes along with an offer you can't refuse. I wasn't going to play any more leading roles. I don't like it because you've got to get up early in the morning for eight weeks. But I just had to do Youth. It was wonderful."
Sorrentino (This Must Be The Place, The Great Beauty) wrote and directed the film, which involves Caine's retired orchestra conductor and composer being pulled from a trying holiday in the Alps to organise a royal performance.
Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Alex Macqueen and Jane Fonda co-star, and Youth is out in the UK on January 15 next year.
How 'Batman's butler' Michael Caine almost got in trouble with the queen
Michael Caine is one of the quickest wits in films, and his cheeky mouth almost got him in hot water with the Queen of England .
The 82-year-old Caine told a story at the Cannes Film Festival Wednesday about his knighthood with Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
Said Caine:
“She knighted me once. And I nearly got into trouble. She didn’t say much. She sorta of put the sword on me. But she said, ‘I have a feeling you have been doing what you do for a very long time.’ And I almost said, ‘And so have you.’ “
Caine with head intact and knighthood in 2000 (AFP)
Fortunately, Caine held his tongue.
“I said, ‘Michael keep your mouth shut, you’re about to lose your knighthood or be taken to The Tower and beheaded.'”
Caine added that the queen actually has a sense of humor.
“I was at a party with her once. And there was a very dull man on the other side of her. She turned to me and said, ‘Mr. Caine, do you know any jokes?’ I said, ‘None I can tell you.’ She said, ‘While you are thinking of one, I’ll tell you one.’ So she told me a joke. The most annoying thing is I cannot remember what the joke was.”
Actors Michael Caine, right, and Harvey Keitel are in Cannes for “Youth” (AP)
Caine was a vibrant force at the festival with the film Youth.
But he said he enjoys that 12-year-old kids come up to him now, recognizing him as “Batman’s Butler” Alfred in the Dark Knight series.
Bruce Wayne and Alfred from “The Dark Knight” (WB).
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