The Elephant to Hollywood

by Michael Caine

  I reckon Dressed to Kill is a bloody good thriller – and it still scares me. It came out at around the time they were trying to catch the serial killer known as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ and various groups lobbied the distributors to withdraw it in the north of England, because they claimed it might have encouraged the murders. (When they eventually caught Peter Sutcliffe they asked him if he had ever seen it and he hadn’t.)

  I’m pretty sure my mother never got to see my performance in Dressed to Kill (just as well – it might have triggered memories of my father’s worst fears about my chosen career), but she did come out to visit us in Los Angeles at about this time. She was now eighty-one and almost everything about the trip and our life there was a completely new experience for her. She wasn’t going to let it faze her, though – rather like the mother of another British working-class lad made good and Hollywood neighbour of ours, David Hockney. When Mrs Hockney came over for afternoon tea with us and I asked her what she thought of Beverly Hills, she said, ‘It’s lovely, dear – but it’s a terrible waste.’ ‘Waste of what?’ I asked. ‘All that sunshine,’ she said, ‘and no one’s got the washing out!’ My own mother hit the nail right on the head without meaning to, in her usual guise as Mrs Malaprop. ‘Oooh,’ she said, pointing out of the car window at the lush flowers and plants on the way in to Beverly Hills from the airport, ‘look at all that hysteria climbing up the walls.’ She’d summed up Hollywood, in a nutshell.

  When Dominique flew over to join us, the whole family was reunited and I took her and Mum to Las Vegas as a special treat. My mother was in her element and stayed up every night until three o’clock in the morning, partying as I suppose she’d never had the chance to as a young woman. Eventually she would agree that it was time to go to bed, although she wasn’t happy with the décor of her bedroom at Caesar’s Palace. ‘That mirror over the bed,’ she said. ‘What’s that for? Complete waste of money.’ I had to think on my feet: Mum still undressed in the dark. ‘It’s so women can put on their make-up before they get up,’ I offered. Mum sniffed. ‘Lazy cows,’ she said. Indeed.

  After Mum went back to England (she was keen to catch up with her favourite soap opera), and we had taken a short holiday there, too, I went off to Hungary to work with John Huston again. This time it was on a film called Escape to Victory set during the Second World War and telling the story of a group of prisoners of war who play a game of soccer against a German team. Not only was John directing it, but Sylvester Stallone – who had just made the smash hits Rocky and Rocky II – was playing the goalkeeper. Sly was great to work with, if a bit exhausting: he never stopped exercising. If there was a five-minute break he would do push-ups, if there was a ten-minute break he would do push-ups and sit-ups. I lost weight just watching him. On the whole he was great fun – except for one piece of Hollywood ‘star’ behaviour he had picked up from somewhere. He was in the middle of writing Rocky III (but then again it might have been IV, or V) and insisted on only being called to the set if his scenes were about to be filmed. He had much better things to be getting on with than hanging around waiting. One morning he was called to shoot a scene and the weather changed and he was kept waiting for three hours while another scene was shot. He would, he informed us, make us all wait three hours the next day to make up for this. And so the following day we all had to sit around so he could make his point. Everyone was waiting for me to explode – and I was pissed off – but I had had a better idea. When Sly eventually deigned to appear, I asked him if I could have a private word. ‘I just want to say thanks,’ I said. ‘I was at a party last night and hadn’t learnt my lines – those extra three hours saved my bacon.’ He looked a bit nonplussed and I went on, ‘And I’ve got another party tonight, and more dialogue tomorrow – so could you be three hours late again so I don’t get into trouble?’ He was never late again.

  John Huston and Sly were great to work with, but for me the real joy of the movie was playing football along with such giants of the game as Pelé, Bobby Moore and Ossie Ardiles – it was a dream come true! It’s just one more of those ‘only in Hollywood’ moments – I mean, Pelé, Bobby Moore, Ossie Ardiles with Rambo in goal? No one could beat us! I love football and used to kick a ball around in the street, as all boys do – in fact I did it last weekend with my grandson. I played right back at school and I thought I was pretty good – well, no one could get past me at Hackney Downs, anyway – but, as someone who likes their comforts, I never liked the cold mornings or worse the cold showers with other blokes, so I didn’t pursue it beyond school sports. Just as well – I had a knockabout with Pelé and Bobby Moore while we were filming and I realised how bad I was . . . But I am a huge armchair football fan and a great supporter of Chelsea. I took Shakira once to a Chelsea game (and, yes, I did have to explain the off-side rule), because she’d never been. It was great – we were in Abramovich’s box – and she enjoyed it, but I’d much rather watch a match on TV where you can see all the action and the replays. If you’ve turned your head at the wrong moment, or the play is at the other end of the pitch, you can miss something important entirely. As I’m writing this, I’m glued to the World Cup. I’ll support England through anything but I have just watched them crash out disastrously. They remind me of an all-star movie in which the members of the cast are so full of their own importance they can’t work as a team.

  Life on the pitch filming Escape to Victory may have been exciting, but life off the pitch in Budapest was very drab. Still under Communist rule, it looked beautiful – and of course, now it is a wonderful and lively city to visit – but back then it was grey and depressing. There were only two decent restaurants and both of them were patronised by members of the Party and their mistresses. I couldn’t wait to leave every weekend and would rush off to the airport to get back to London, where Shakira and Natasha were staying.

  It was fantastic to be back in England and I loved catching up with friends and family, but because I was a tax exile, I was only allowed up to ninety days in the UK and so it wasn’t long before we found ourselves back in Hollywood. Although I was happy to be spending the winter months in the warmth of LA and we had a regular flow of British friends passing through, all of them in despair about the state of the British film industry, I was aware that I was beginning to miss my own country. I even found myself recreating our Mill House Sunday lunches with the traditional roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, which was bizarre in a-hundred-degree heat. I’ve always enjoyed cooking, and although after Shakira and I got together I expanded my repertoire from the classic English fry-ups I’d loved as a kid to include some healthier options, the roast Sunday lunch has always been a family favourite. And here in California it seemed a way of connecting with a piece of England I have always loved.

  My father, of course, believed that cooking was women’s work and real men didn’t go near it. He was always a bit dubious about the acting profession for the same reason. He would have been horrified enough if he had lived to see California Suite (in which I played a gay man) and Dressed to Kill, but what he would have thought of Deathtrap, my next film, doesn’t bear thinking about. In this film I achieved what no other male actor has ever managed before or since: I kissed Superman. My co-star was Christopher Reeve, already an international star through Superman, and a good friend of mine, which was perhaps just as well: Christopher and I were playing closet gays who murder my ‘wife’. We were filming in New York, which was great for me as I could hang out at Elaine’s, the restaurant, and spend time with friends like Elaine herself, Bobbie Zarem, my press agent, his brother, Danny, who was in the menswear business, and the producer Marty Bregman and his wife, Cornelia. The director of Deathtrap – which was an adaptation of Ira Levin’s brilliant play of the same name – was Sidney Lumet. I had wanted to work with him and I was delighted to have a chance to work together.

  With a great script and a co-star like Christopher Reeve, who had been keen to take on the role to avoid the almost inevitable typecasting that he feared would
come with a role like Superman, the filming was going really well. But eventually we got to the point where there was no avoiding the big moment. Although we had had several dry runs, as it were, where we just mimed the kiss, we both knew what was coming. Christopher and I had been drinking brandy to get up courage steadily over the course of the afternoon and by the time we got to the real thing, we had had so much we couldn’t remember the dialogue and Sidney Lumet got very pissed off. I really don’t remember much about the actual kiss itself, but I do remember saying to Christopher just as we were getting into position and before Sidney Lumet called ‘Action’, ‘Whatever you do, don’t open your mouth!’ It must be the longest close-mouthed kiss in cinema history . . . I was in a café quite recently and bursting for a pee and there were only two cubicles, one for men and one for women. The Men’s was occupied but Ladies’ was free, so having checked no one was around, I dived into it. While I was in there, the doorknob rattled; unfortunately a real lady had turned up. When I’d finished, I opened the door and said to the woman waiting, ‘It’s OK, I’m a lesbian.’ And she said, quick as a flash, ‘No you’re not. I saw you kiss Superman in Deathtrap . . .’

  After Deathtrap, I went back to Beverly Hills for some time off. Shakira was loving the Hollywood life and with Natasha happy at a wonderful school, Marymount, in Westwood nearby, we were delighted to take a break and just enjoy ourselves. I became a sort of unpaid social ambassador and among other events, hosted a dinner for Princess Michael of Kent at Morton’s, the newest, hottest restaurant in LA, as well as being roped in whenever other visiting royalty came to town. My agent, Sue Mengers – who was besotted by the British royal family – was chosen to give a dinner for Princess Margaret and invited me as a ‘safe’ dinner party guest. Sue, truly one of Hollywood’s toughest dealmakers, was so overcome by the proximity of royalty that she nearly collapsed with nerves on the night, but she needn’t have worried. The stars all turned out – for Sue, as much as for Princess Margaret – including Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand and (apparently by special request) Barry Manilow, and the evening was a huge success.

  I can’t have disgraced myself on that occasion, because I found myself wheeled out when the Queen visited LA. It was a very grand affair, held at the Twentieth Century Fox studios, with the British Hollywood contingent lined up on a dais either side of the Queen and the rest of Hollywood on tables below. The evening had been financed by a multi-millionaire car dealer who, as a reward, got to sit on one side of the Queen, while the director, ex-husband of Vanessa Redgrave and father of Natasha and Joely Richardson, Tony Richardson, sat on the other. The Queen seemed happy enough chatting to Tony, who always had a great fund of stories, but she was obviously finding it harder going with the car-dealer. I was sitting on his other side and I sympathised . . . It was not long before I heard an unmistakeable voice. ‘Mr Caine!’ There, peeping round the side of the tongue-tied car-dealer, was the Queen. ‘Mr Caine!’ she said again. ‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ I replied, hoping that was the right way to address a sovereign. ‘Do you know any good jokes?’ she asked. ‘I do, ma’am,’ I said, ‘but I’m not sure they would be suitable . . .’ ‘Well, why not have a go?’ she suggested with a twinkle. ‘And then I’ll tell you one.’ Not sure whether or not I was risking extradition and a spell in the Tower of London, I embarked on a story about a four-legged chicken, which seemed to go down very well – and we spent the rest of the evening swapping jokes. Of course if I passed on the ones she told me I might very well end up in the Tower, so I won’t, but I can tell you that the Queen has a great sense of humour!

  While I might have been enjoying a reputation as a bit of a comedian off-screen in Hollywood, most of the films I had starred in over the previous few years were not at all funny. By the time we’d finished Deathtrap I was beginning to long for a really good comedy – and when it came, it was worth the wait.

  12

  Oscar Nights

  I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance and I always answer, Educating Rita. To me, Educating Rita is the most perfect performance I could give of a character who was as far away from me as you could possibly get and of all the films I have ever been in, I think it may be the one I am most proud of.

  I’m proud of it, too, because taking the part wasn’t immediately the most obvious thing for me to do – for a start it involved turning down a film co-starring Sally Field, who had just won an Oscar for Norma Rae, in favour of playing opposite Julie Walters who had never appeared in a film at all. But the director was Lewis Gilbert, director of Alfie, and the screenplay was by Willy Russell, who had adapted it from his own novel and play and he had opened the play out so that the back-story of the two characters is played out on screen. The story was also very close to my heart, because although it was a comedy, it was the story of the late flowering of a woman who has had few opportunities in life, and it carries a strong message about class and education. It’s rare, too, to find something in cinema that is deeply written enough for the characters to change each other the way Frank Bryant and Rita do: they have a profound effect on each other. And when I look back at my own films, the ones that stand out for me in terms of character development like this are all films that began in the theatre: Alfie, Sleuth, California Suite and Deathtrap.

  While I could appreciate the strengths of the script, taking on the character of an overweight, alcoholic professor was a real challenge for me. To help get into the role, I grew a shaggy beard and put on about thirty pounds and called on every nuance of alcoholic behaviour I could recall. It would have been easy to play the part the way Rex Harrison played Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady – but I saw Dr Frank Bryant as far less attractive and more vulnerable than that and went back to Emil Jannings’s performance as the ugly professor who nurses an unrequited love for Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, for inspiration. I became so immersed in the part and what I imagined to be the ‘type’, that I felt as if I had known academics all my life. On our first day’s shooting in the idyllic grounds of Trinity College, Dublin, I found myself hailing a familiar figure, overweight and with a straggly beard, shambling across College Green, convinced he was an old friend. As he got closer, I realised I didn’t know him from Adam, but I reckoned I did know exactly what he did . . . ‘Excuse me,’ I said, when he got near enough, ‘you’re not a professor of English by any chance, are you?’ He stopped, swaying a bit, perhaps from the effects of the previous night or perhaps from the weight of the case of red wine he was carrying, and said, amazed, ‘How on earth did you know that?’ ‘Oh,’ I shrugged. ‘Just a lucky guess.’

  Julie Walters was brilliant. Of course she had already done a lot of television and had played Rita in the West End stage play, but it was her first ever movie, although you would never have known it – she was a completely instinctive film actress. Like John Huston, Lewis Gilbert was a hands-off director and believed in letting the actors get on with it. A measured man, he was nevertheless obviously pleased at the way the filming was going and one day he said to me – just as he had fifteen years before with Alfie – that he thought both Julie and I would be nominated for an Academy Award for our roles in the movie. And just as he had been fifteen years previously with Alfie, he was right.

  For Alfie, I had had the misfortune to be up against my friend the great actor Paul Scofield who had been nominated in the Best Actor category for his role as Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. I had seen his performance and thought it was brilliant and realised I had no chance of winning with Alfie so I didn’t turn up. The next time I was nominated was for Sleuth in 1973, again for Best Actor, but my co-star Laurence Olivier was also nominated for his role in Sleuth, so we had cut our own chances in half from the start. On that occasion I decided to go to the ceremony anyway because I had never been and I thought it might be fun. Big mistake. For a start, in a moment of madness I’d agreed to host a quarter of the ceremony, with Carol Burnett, Charlton Heston and Rock Hudson
doing the other three quarters.

  Presenting the Oscars was the most nerve-wracking job I have ever done in show business. It’s very much a live show: they have comedy writers waiting in the wings and as you come off between presentations they hand you an appropriate gag to tell. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was destined to get even more stressful when it got to the Best Actor nominations. Marlon Brando won it for The Godfather, but – as we all knew he would – he refused to accept it and sent a Native American girl called Sacheen Littlefeather on his behalf, to read a fifteen-page speech protesting at the treatment of Native Americans by the film and television industry. The producer of the show had told her beforehand that she would be slung off if she spoke for more than forty-five seconds so she restricted herself to a short speech – which got quite a few boos – and read Brando’s letter to the press afterwards. I think that any gesture in a good cause is admirable, but I would have been more impressed if Marlon had turned down his first Oscar, not his second. It turned out that the young lady’s name was in fact Marie Cruz, that she was an actress whose mother was Caucasian, and that three months after the Oscar ceremony she posed for Playboy magazine. Of course it doesn’t invalidate the cause, and Sacheen Littlefeather continues to work as an activist today, but it does show you, yet again, that Hollywood is never quite what you think it is!