Another downside of being a star: you can get in everywhere, but you can’t get out anywhere. Or not without a circus of press and fans accompanying you. This point was first brought home to me in 1967 when The Ipcress File was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and I was put up in a very grand suite at the Carlton Hotel. It was undreamt-of glamour and luxury for me. Which was lucky, because it was difficult for me to leave my suite without being mobbed by the press. These days, everyone has a camera on them and everyone wants a selfie.
But I don’t get upset about it. I enjoy it, and I remind myself that it’s better than the alternative. Some truly great stars are content to remain behind their on-screen personas.
Once I was waiting outside the Beverly Hills Hotel with Cary Grant. We had bumped into each other and were just chatting when a tourist noticed us and rushed over. “Michael Caine,” she said breathlessly, “is it really you? I’ve been in Hollywood for two weeks and you’re the first movie star I’ve seen.” She turned to Cary Grant. “You just never see movie stars in Hollywood, do you?”
“No, ma’am,” answered Cary, politely. “You don’t.” Cary didn’t mind a bit, though.
But when I had a similar experience, I felt differently. I was shooting The Wilby Conspiracy, an anti-apartheid movie, with Sidney Poitier, in Kenya in the mid-1970s. Sidney was a massive star in Hollywood but in Kenya he was treated like a god. Meanwhile I was completely safe to break out my suede shoes: no one in Kenya seemed to know or care who I was. Even the man sent to meet Shakira, baby Natasha and me at the airport had no idea who I was. It was a strange sensation after years of fame, and although I tried to enjoy being able to walk down the street without being harassed by fans, the novelty soon wore off. I realised I had actually come to get a kick out of the recognition.
Other stars claim not to enjoy the attention. I was in Capri with Elton John a few years ago and we were walking up Via Camerelle, the island’s beautiful main shopping street, full of boutiques and designer stores. Elton stopped at a watch shop and we were soon joined by a swarm of paparazzi and fans. He started to grumble to me about always being recognised and bothered by photographers. I love Elton dearly, and I admire his dress sense, but I suggested that life would have been easier that day if he had chosen a different outfit. I was in my usual dark blue slacks and black T-shirt with sunglasses and a baseball cap. Elton was dressed in a bright yellow suit and a ton of bling.
As Frank Sinatra said to me when I was moaning once about tourists with cameras, “There is only one thing worse than people asking for pictures, and that is no one asking for pictures.” I think Oscar Wilde would have agreed. So, if you see me out and about, don’t be shy. Feel free to come up and ask me for a selfie.
If you’re having your shoes pissed on, you can either get upset about it, or you can take John Wayne’s approach: accept the compliment and stop wearing suede shoes.
I do struggle not to get upset when people who don’t know me at all decide who I am and who I’m allowed to be. Ultimately, though, I can’t control other people’s prejudices and I certainly can’t control what journalists choose to write about me. Of course everyone is judged by others all the time, but the downside of being a star is that it is all so much more public, and everybody thinks they’re entitled to have a go. It’s just part of the territory.
Ever since I played Alfie, parts of the press have found it difficult not to see me as him: a rather uncouth, rather ignorant, chirpy Cockney sparrow, who landed on his feet being cast as uncouth, ignorant, chirpy Cockney sparrows. In the 1960s I was explaining to a journalist that my daughter was called Dominique. “Oh,” he said. “You named her after the Singing Nun, did you?” (In 1963 there had been a rather strange number-one hit called “Dominique,” performed by a group of singing Belgian nuns.)
“No,” I said. “She was named after Dominique Francon, the heroine of the Ayn Rand novel The Fountainhead.”
He looked stunned. “I’ve never read that,” he said. And why, he seemed to be saying, would this ignorant Cockney bastard have read it?
Britain is much less uptight about class than it used to be but every so often I still get a whiff of it. My current home is a two-hundred-year-old tithe barn that we lovingly and at great expense converted. It is the same traditional style of barn that Tesco then used for its huge supermarkets in the middle of the English countryside. The idea was to make them sympathetic to their environment. One snobbish journalist visiting us told his readers that Michael Caine had built his house to look like a supermarket—the only-just-unsaid assumption being that someone like me would be incapable of having decent taste.
And I was interviewed by an English journalist not long ago who said that I had been wonderful as a butler in Batman Returns. “Thank you very much,” I said.
And then he added, “But, of course, servants are easier to play, aren’t they?” These are small and silly comments and I try not to take them seriously.
And, of course, there are the critics: the professional critics who have a job of work to do, and the people who are just out to put you down. That is all part of living a very public life. Everyone is going to have an opinion about you, and some of those opinions will be expressed quite woundingly.
The important thing here is to try to stay tuned in to people whose opinions matter, and to try to ignore those whose opinions do not—whether they’re singing your praises or kicking you in the balls. I desperately needed good publicity early on in my career and scoured the reviews for every word about me. I remember when The Ipcress File came out in 1965: I went out and bought all the newspapers and brought them back to my little London flat. The first review I read was terrible and plunged me into the depths of despair. But the next was good, the one after that even better, and finally as I read rave after rave I started to cry uncontrollably—great heaving sobs and finally howls of pent-up ambition and relief. Those reviews really mattered. Later I learnt to steer well clear of my reviews because they were often quite hurtful. The only critics I took any notice of were Dilys Powell in The Sunday Times, Pauline Kael in the New Yorker and Mark Kermode in the Guardian and on Radio 5. If they said a movie was a dud then it probably was. Now there is just no point in reading them. A great review won’t help me, and a bad one won’t destroy me.
Nevertheless, my ability to ignore the both the bouquets and brickbats was sorely tested very recently.
In 2016, GQ magazine, as part of its annual Men of the Year Awards, made me its Legend of the Year. I was stunned and utterly delighted. A week later, Shakira and I were walking down Bond Street and someone approached us. “I read that GQ magazine has called you a legend,” he said. “It’s not true. You’re a god.” And off he went. Shakira and I stood there flabbergasted for a moment, then both burst out laughing. Meanwhile, at almost exactly the same time, a popular newspaper decided—I don’t know why—to publish a long piece on the fifteen worst films I had ever made. (No need to look it up, I’ll tell you what the article decided they were: The Swarm, The Hand, Water, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, Ashanti, Blue Ice, On Deadly Ground, Blame It on Rio, Jaws: The Revenge, The Island, The Last Witch Hunter, Bullseye, Mr. Destiny, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Austin Powers in Goldmember and Quicksand.) Pages and pages of a “light-hearted guide to Caine’s worst howlers.” Banter, I think they call it. And mostly I agreed with their choices. It’s just that it felt like when someone else criticises your mum. You might agree with them. It might be right on the nail and quite funny. But that doesn’t make it OK. In the end, though, I did manage to laugh at it too.
While we’re on the subject, another thing that does still get to me a little is the critics’ obsession with my accent. If I’m playing a Cockney, the complaint is that I’m always playing the same part, always playing myself: as though all Cockneys are essentially the same. As though Alfred Hitchcock, David Bowie and I are the same person. As if Alfie (a self-centred womaniser), Harry Palmer (a cool-headed MI5 spy) and Jack Carter (a hardened, murde
rous gangster) are all interchangeable. If I’m not playing a Cockney, the complaint is that my put-on accent isn’t authentic enough. This thread has run right through my career, from Zulu to The Cider House Rules.
On Zulu, critics who didn’t know me (and therefore didn’t know I was a working-class lad) enjoyed my performance and didn’t comment on my accent. Only the critics who already knew what I sounded like in real life claimed to be able to hear the private under the officer.
When I first gave my dialogue coach for The Cider House Rules my American accent he laughed. “That’s wonderful, Michael,” he said, “but that’s a California accent.” That made sense: I’d lived in LA for many years. “You’re playing a man from New England. It’s actually much closer to an English accent than it is to a Californian one.” I spent hours working on that accent, listening to tapes and wandering around Northampton, Massachusetts, where we were filming, listening to people speak. I might have been complimented on my New England accent by the New Englander but in England it got panned for being “too English.” What can I say?
I don’t mind criticism at all but, like most people, when I get it I want it to be fair and helpful.
I started this chapter with a mention of the glittery world of awards ceremonies. They are part and parcel of stardom and I would struggle to say whether they’re a pro or a con. Sometimes they bring a well-deserving individual or team to greater prominence. At others they feel like a popularity contest. It’s a mixed bag. Awards ceremonies simply are. In my world, the most sought-after accolade is the Academy Award, or Oscar. Like a lot of things in the movie business, the ceremony itself looks very glamorous but in fact involves a lot of hanging about and tension, wearing uncomfortable clothes and feeling hungry.
Winner or loser, if you’re nominated the spotlight will be on you and you will have to try to behave appropriately—to be a generous and humble winner, or a gracious loser. There are baubles to be won in many walks of life and I think the trick is to not take them too seriously either way. Enjoy the moment with good grace if you win, but persuade yourself they’re not important if you don’t. It’s not an easy trick to pull off, especially if you have to find that “loser’s smile” in the full glare of the world’s press.
I was given my first Best Actor nomination for Alfie in 1967, when my friend Paul Scofield won for his brilliant performance as Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. I didn’t dream I would win—to the extent that I didn’t even go to the ceremony—so I was not too disappointed. At that point I was genuinely honoured simply to be nominated. I did attend the ceremony six years later, in 1973, when I got my second nomination, for Sleuth. That year, Marlon Brando won for The Godfather and, as an act of protest, sent a young Native American woman called Sacheen Littlefeather to collect the award on his behalf. That time, I was too busy being scared witless to be very upset: for some reason, I had agreed to host part of the ceremony, alongside Rock Hudson, Carol Burnett and Charlton Heston. The whole thing was broadcast live, with comedy writers standing in the wings and writing jokes on the fly. It was the most nerve-racking job I have ever done.
Ten years later in 1983 I was nominated for a third time, for Educating Rita. This time the odds were stacked against me as four of the five nominees were British, though I suspect the winner, American actor Robert Duvall, would have won in any case for his role as a burnt-out country singer in Tender Mercies. As I headed to the after-show party I braced myself for nodding and smiling my way through a series of commiserations and was then moved to tears when I was greeted instead by a standing ovation. Being honoured by my friends like that meant as much as winning the award itself. I was so touched when Cary Grant came up to me and gave me a hug. “You’re a winner here, Michael,” he whispered.
It was 1987 when I finally won my first Academy Award, in the Best Supporting Actor category for my role in Hannah and Her Sisters, and I wasn’t even there. The film had been released in February and I had been so sure I would not be nominated (Woody Allen was famously anti-Oscar) that I had not even put the ceremony date in my diary. So, in a terrible piece of luck, I was unavoidably absent, on a ten-day shoot for Jaws: The Revenge. The only nomination that won me was one for Worst Supporting Actor at the Golden Raspberry Awards the following year.
By 2000 when I was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Cider House Rules I had learnt my lesson and I was actually there. As everyone knows, time is of the essence in acceptance speeches, and if you go on too long, the music cuts you off. I had been nominated alongside Tom Cruise, Jude Law, Michael Clarke Duncan and Haley Joel Osment and wanted to pick them out for a remark. I became aware I was going on a bit long, but I also knew this might be my only chance at an Oscars’ acceptance speech and I needed another minute. I glanced to the wings and got a thumbs-up from my friend Dick Zanuck, who was producing that year. Gold dust.
It’s nice to be nice. It also pays off sometimes. In my acceptance speech, when I mentioned Tom Cruise, who had been nominated for his part in Magnolia, I told him he should be pleased he didn’t win, as the dressing-room trailers given to supporting actors would be too small and modest for him. It was a joke. But the next movie I shot was Miss Congeniality, produced by and starring Sandra Bullock, who was an absolute joy to work with and a true star. She was playing an FBI agent going undercover as a beauty queen. I was the beauty pageant coach—a kind of Professor Higgins role. When I was shown to my trailer on the first day, it was the biggest and most luxurious trailer I had ever seen. On the door was pinned a handwritten note from Sandra: “Welcome to the shoot. This is as big as Tom’s.” And it was.
Sandra Bullock, by the way, is one of the most pleasant, hard-working and talented people working in the movies today, and a master at the art of gracious winning and losing. I remember in 2010 she won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in The Blind Side. The night before that she had won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress in a film called All About Steve. She turned up to both events, and conducted herself with the same grace and humour at both.
My most recent nomination was for The Quiet American in 2003. At the time I felt this had been a performance of a lifetime for me. It is still one of the roles of which I’m most proud: where I got closest to making myself disappear and truly becoming someone else. But the timing was way off. So soon after 9/11, and just four days after the U.S. invaded Iraq, a movie even slightly critical of U.S. foreign policy did not stand a chance.
Much as I would love to say that I no longer care about awards, I actually do, a little bit. In 2015 I played a classical-music conductor in a movie called Youth, written and directed by the brilliant and tender Paolo Sorrentino. I was very proud of my performance, which I rated as one of the best of my career, and of the movie. Youth won Best Film from the European Academy, Paolo Sorrentino won Best Director and I won Best Actor. But the British and American Academies and the Golden Globes ignored the movie, Paolo and me altogether. I was disappointed, I have to admit.
Winner or loser, my favourite bit was always the after-show party where, however famous I might get, I could still get star-struck by my fellow guests. One year I went to the Gents and found myself washing my hands alongside Rupert Murdoch and George Lucas. I’m not sure either of them recognised the other but for me, looking up at the unlikely trio in the mirror in front of me, it was quite surreal.
In my experience, the most surprising thing about becoming a star is that it changes everything and nothing. My life was turned upside down and in many ways transformed, but when I woke up every morning I was still me. The little voice inside my head was still exactly the same. And it was saying: What now? What next?
I like to say, when you reach the top, that’s when the climb begins. By all means take some deep breaths and try to capture the view in your mind’s eye. Find the perfect spot to sit and eat your sandwiches. But then what? However perfect the spot may be, just sitting there for ever isn’t an option. So you either head back down, or consult the map and str
ike out along the ridge line for that other peak just barely visible in the distance. Even when you think you’ve finally made it, you aren’t going to stop, are you? You’re going to carry on. So you’d better make sure you enjoy the journey.
Standing at each of my own personal peaks, I realised that I had to keep climbing. First, because of the obligations I now had to other people. Money for a film would often be raised in my name, and in the expectation of my continuing and reliable presence. On-set, I was expected to carry every scene I was in, oozing star quality. Off-screen, I was needed for interviews, public appearances, promotions, to ensure the picture got as much attention as possible. I have always considered doing publicity for a movie to be part of the deal but, I have to admit, it is one aspect of the business that I have never learnt to love. I suppose I had imagined that being a star would be a bit like being a beautiful tiger, padding sleek and serene through the movie jungle as lesser beasts scrambled to clear my path. It was more like being an old elephant, wearily carrying everything on his back.
And, just as important, I had to keep climbing for myself. Even when I had two movies on release in the United States (Alfie and The Ipcress File) and an Oscar nomination, even when I had made my first Hollywood movie (Gambit), even when I had made dozens of acclaimed movies, even when I had won an Oscar (for Hannah and Her Sisters), and then another (for The Cider House Rules), I was convinced that I was not going to keep my place up in that firmament unless I kept doing the things that had got me there in the first place. For me, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to remain a star. It was that I wanted to keep doing the work I loved. It wasn’t the view from the summit but the pleasure in every step. So I kept learning, kept reinventing myself, kept seeking out new challenges, kept on climbing.
Blowing the Bloody Doors Off Page 14
