Michael Caine’s net worth is $75 Million. Also know about Michael Caine’s bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship, and more …

Michael Caine Wiki Biography

• Sir Michael Caine, born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, London, on 14 March 1933, is one of England’s most famous actors and, since 1953, has not only been involved in the film industry but is reputed to be the world’s highest-paid actor. 
• Michael was nominated six times, two of which he won, for an Academy Award. 
• He is also the winner of the Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards as the Best Actor. 
• As an author, Caine is also recognized. 
• He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and Sir Maurice Micklewhite for his lifetime achievements. 
• Caine has received a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, in addition to all these honors. 
• Recently, it has been reported that Michael Caine’s gross net worth has crossed $75 million overall. 
• Major houses, luxury restaurants, and even a football team are his possessions. 
• Michael Caine started his career with an uncredited appearance in Gordon Parry’s film “Panic in the Parlor” (1956). 
• He only performed additional minor and uncredited roles in films during the first six years of his career. 
• In 1962, Caine landed his first main role in Gordon Flemyng’s film “Solo for Sparrow.” 
• After he landed the role of Harry Palmer in the movie “The Ipcress File” (1965) directed by Sidney J. Furie, Clain won a BAFTA Award for Best British Actor Clain. 
• A year later, for his role as Alfie Elkins in the film Alfie (1966), directed by Lewis Gilbert, Michael was nominated for his first Oscar and several other awards, two of which he won. 
• An extraordinary personality and excellent actor, Michael Caine has been nominated for an Oscar every decade, contributing significantly to his net worth. 
• In ‘Sleuth’ (1972) directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, ‘Educating Rita’ (1983) directed by Lewis Gilbert, ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’ (1986) directed by Woody Allen, ‘The Cider House Rules’ (1999) directed by Lasse Hallström and ‘The Silent American’ (2002) directed by Phillip Noyce, Caine won nominations for his roles. 
• “Jack the Ripper” (1988) “Jekyl&Hyde” (1990) “World War II: When Lions Roared” (1994) $75 Million 1933 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) Academy Award Actor Actors Alfie Alfie (1966) Author BAFTA Billion Dollar Brain Blazing Minds Boston British films British people Christopher Nolan Copley Square David Gyasi Dominique Caine Educating British people Christopher Nolan Copley Square David Gyasi Dominique Caine Educating 

Michael Caine Quick Info

Michael Caine Trademarks

1. Frequently works with director Christopher Nolan
2. Tall, lean frame
3. Often plays mentors and father figures to younger characters in films
4. His cockney accent
5. His spectacles (rare for 1960s leading actors)

Michael Caine Quotes

• [About starring in “Youth”, Hollywood Reporter – December 2015] The only alternative to playing elderly people is playing dead people. So I picked elderly people. That’s a better idea.
• [In order to appear strong in character] Don’t blink.
• (On Sean Connery) If you were his friend in these early days you didn’t raise the subject of Bond. He was, and is, a much better actor than just playing James Bond, but he became synonymous with Bond. He’d be walking down the street and people would say, “Look, there’s James Bond.” That was particularly upsetting to him.
• [on Queen Queen Elizabeth II] She knighted me once. I nearly got into trouble though. She said to me, “I have a feeling you have been doing what you do for a very long time”. And I almost said, ‘And so have you’.
• If I made a film like The Swarm (1978), I would make three very quickly before it came out, so I always survived failure – because I had a hit. People say: ‘Why did you do Jaws: The Revenge (1987)?’. They paid me $1million for 10 days… I come from a very poor background so I wanted to do everything for everyone. Every one of my family got a house. That was the attitude I had. I’m either going to get the Academy Award or I’m going to make a lot of money, I still base it on that.
• I do a lot of charity work, but never for adults. I don’t like grown-ups very much.
• My charity is the NSPCC, which I’ve always done. I’m one of the patrons at the NSPCC, which harks back to when I was younger. So my charity goes towards children. If I were ever to do another charity, I would do it for the homeless. That’s the other thing that bugs me, the homeless. But for me, it’s mainly the children. I care very much about them.
• I can seem quite cold and I can hold it in but it stores itself; it works later. I’m very easily moved. I’m not repressed at all.
• [on Henry Fonda while shooting The Swarm (1978)]: ‘He’s one of the most astute actors I’ve ever known, with an intimate awareness of the film profession.’
• People always told me “you can’t be an actor, you don’t talk posh.” And I said, “I’ll show you how to be an actor without talking posh”. And I did it.
• I’ve always got to have one impossible dream on the back burner. The one I’ve had for a long time is to write a screenplay from the novel I’ve written. And direct it, and star in it. It’s an impossible dream. But if you think of my life, there are so many impossible dreams that have come true for me that no dream is ever impossible any more as far as I’m concerned.
• I know a lot of stuff but my close friend, Leslie (lyricist Leslie Bricusse), knows everything, and before Google, the two of us were sort of human Googles!
• I’m the United Kingdom of Michael Caine.
• I’m an icon. It says so in the paper.
• [Roger Moore] does the two things I hate most. I love children but I could never do what Roger’s doing. My idea of hell is long airplane flights. My other idea of hell is giving speeches to strangers. He does both all the time. Believe me, he’s earned his knighthood!’
• [When I was evacuated during the war, I spent a brief period with a family who exercised] a mild form of child abuse [by locking me in a cupboard. My mother found out after a fortnight and took me away,] but it was long enough to leave a mark, which formed part of my psyche for the rest of my life. I have never trusted an adult until a great deal of investigation has gone into them. I trust everyone on the surface, but directly anything starts to go deeper in the relationship, I’m very mistrusting. Even now. Because of what happened to me as a child. Maybe that’s why I am a controlling person. I usually control the environment I’m in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.
• I love comedy. I love to make people laugh. If I hadn’t been an actor, or an architect, which I really wanted to be, I’d have been a stand-up comic.
• I’m always supremely confident as a movie actor and my own view of myself is that I’m a highly skilled movie actor.
• I think life has got to develop as you get older and I don’t want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.
• [on Bullet to Beijing (1995)] It was my worst professional experience ever. The filming itself was a joke. The final blow came when we were shooting in the Lenfilm studio itself. I wanted to go to the toilet and they directed me to it. I could smell it 50 yards away and it was the filthiest lavatory I have ever seen. I went outside and relieved myself against the sound stage, which I noticed several other men had done before. So this is where my career has ended, I thought to myself: in the toilet. I’m done.
• The danger is, of course, that the wait for a decent movie makes you desperate, and I got desperate to the point that I accepted a picture in Alaska with Steven Seagal, the martial arts expert. The movie was called On Deadly Ground (1994) and the title was to prove apt. Although Steven and the rest of the team were great to work with, I had broken one of the cardinal rules of bad movies: if you’re going to do a bad movie, at least do it in a great location. Here I was, doing a movie where the work was freezing my brain and the weather was freezing my arse.
• Today I’m in the fortunate and luxurious position of only working when I want to. I don’t like getting up early or spending a long time learning lines, so these days I only work with offers that I really can’t refuse. It’s very different from the way I used to be. From the age of 20 to the age of 29, I was obsessed with becoming an actor and when I finally got to Hollywood, I could never quite believe that I had made it and so I kept on working for fear it would all disappear on me. These days, I don’t think like that at all. I don’t see myself as a Hollywood movie star – in fact I don’t see myself as anything in particular.
• Unlike my other golfing friend Sidney Poitier, Sean Connery is not the gentlest person in the world and my lack of grasp of the sport would not make him sad as it did Sidney, it would just make him angry. Sean has a terrible temper and when he tried to teach me golf he was so incensed by my performance he grabbed my club and broke it in two. I’ve never played since and I never will because I do not want to upset two of my best friends, Sean, in particular.
• Harry Brown (2009) wasn’t a movie I wanted to do. It was a movie I HAD to do. I saw a lot of myself in the character and that is what drew me to the role.
• [on Sean Connery] We’re still friends. I phoned him the other day on his 80th birthday, but we never see each other because he doesn’t move around a lot now. He won’t make another film now, no. I just asked him. He said, ‘No, I’ll never do it.’
• [on one good reason for winning an Oscar] It might mean I’d get more scripts without other actors’ coffee stains on them.
• [on Marlon Brando’s sending a surrogate to the 1973 Academy Awards to pick up his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather (1972)] I think if the man wants to make a gesture, I agree entirely with what he did. But I think he should have stood up and done it himself instead of letting some poor little Indian girl [Sacheen Littlefeather] to take the boos. And if, you’re going to make a humanitarian gesture, I think a man who makes $2 million playing the leader of the Mafia should at least give half of it to the Indians.
• [on the death of Tony Curtis] It was a terrible shock and instantly I remembered the first time I’d met him. I was at a party, it was in winter and there was a fire and I was chain-smoking at the time, smoking a lot of cigarettes. I was stood there talking to someone and suddenly I felt a hand in my inside pocket and they took out my cigarettes and chucked them in the fire. I looked up and it was Tony Curtis. I’d never met him and he was very famous. I said, ‘What did you do that for?’ And he said, ‘You’re going to die Michael if you keep doing that.’ I didn’t give them up then but I did give them up eventually.
• I never give advice to younger actors. Because when I was their age, I used to ask actors older than me for advice, and the only advice I got was “Just give up.”
• I left the country for eight years when tax was put up to 82 per cent. You didn’t get the 82 per cent tax from me for eight years. You didn’t get any tax at all from me for the next eight years. Apart from that, a quarter of a billion dollars of movies were made outside this country instead of inside it which is just from one stupid, loud-mouth moronic actor. Imagine what is happening to companies, proper companies, who then disappear. It’s no good.
• One of the odd things about the country today, odd for me to say it, is the obsession with celebrity. I do regard that as a little bit dangerous. Everyone expects too much of you, too much perfection. And then you get the shock headlines when you realize they’re normal, we’re all normal – J-Lo’s got cellulite shock, and the rest – well, frankly, who gives a shit?
• The thing about gangsters in films these days is that they’re either funny or they’re stupid. Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve never met a gangster that’s either. And I come from something of a gangster milieu. Nor have I met someone who deals out violence for violence’s sake. The violence in Get Carter (1971) was incisive, fast and over. One blow, one shot, one hit, what was necessary. No one smashed people up in a sadistic fury.
• When they said they wanted to remake Sleuth (1972), my first thought was, ‘Why make it again at all?’ I do not like remakes. It shows a lack of imagination. But once I saw the script for Sleuth (2007) I realised it wasn’t a remake at all. It was a brand new movie.
• My Alfie (1966) had to ask, ‘What’s it all about’, as he was a bit stupid. Jude’s Alfie (2004) was too smart, too clever by half. I can understand why he said yes to the part, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. An actor’s life is full of decisions, some bad, some good.
• I know there are thousands of actors out there who are as good, and better, than me, who just didn’t get the breaks. I’m not saying that I didn’t deserve any of this but I’m also aware of the fickle nature of this business, and how being in the right place at the right time can change everything.
• I’ll probably vote Conservative. I mean, we’re in a terrible state whichever way you look at it, socially, financially and politically, so just give the other guy a chance. I don’t know what Cameron’s (David Cameron) going to do, but in the end you vote out of desperation. You just have to have someone new and see what happens. I voted for Maggie Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher) because I thought we needed a change from that long period of socialism; I voted for Tony Blair because we had a great long period of Conservatism. The thing now is to vote for Cameron (David Cameron).
• I stayed in Britain, but they kept putting the tax up, so I’d do any old thing every now and then to pay the tax, that was my tax exile money. I realised that’s not a socialist country, it’s a communist country without a dictator, so I left and I was never going to come back. Maggie Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher) came in and put the taxes back down and in the end, you know, you don’t mind paying tax. What am I going to do? Not pay tax and drive around in a Rolls Royce, with cripples begging on the street like you see in some countries?
• Schools are cheaper than prisons. They don’t need to learn Shakespeare (William Shakespeare); they need to read and write and count, so make sure of that. But we need to bring back the old technical colleges where you went to learn how to be an electrician, a plasterer, a carpenter.
• If parents aren’t working, how can they be decent role models? You have to look at all the people who are not sick, who’ve been on benefits for 20 years and have ten kids. I read in the news that we now spend more in benefits than we collect in income tax. I can’t think of any country in the world that’s ever done that. There can’t be six million people who are too sick to go to work. You can’t be accused of attacking the working classes, because they’re not working.
• I refuse to take myself too seriously. I learnt that from Roger Moore many years ago. He said, ‘Cheer up, you’d better have a good time because this is not a rehearsal. This is life – this is the show.
• I once read, ‘You must not compete against your predecessors or your contemporaries. You must compete against yourself.’ I try to look for something better and better and better.
• [on prisons] If you put people in cages, don’t be surprised if they become animals.
• (On composer John Barry during filming of Deadfall (1968)) Look at him, he’s so thin. You wouldn’t think he had a bloody note in him!
• [on John Wayne] Every now and then, we used to meet and have a drink or lunch. He genuinely liked me and of course I adored him. I met him by accident in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Many years later, Shakira (Caine’s wife) was in hospital with peritonitis and John coincidentally was in the next room, dying of cancer. I was around with him at the end. We used to walk up and down the corridor.
• What you have now which you didn’t have when I was young is drugs. You had alcoholism, people getting pissed, but you never had the drugs and that is a massive problem. We were shooting in Hackney and someone local came up to me and said, ‘Welcome to Crackney!’ It was a gentler time when I was young. There were vicious gangsters but they were professional gangsters. They chose who they hit and what they robbed. But the drug addicts today have to kill anybody – it doesn’t matter who – to get the money, so you get this incredible random violence. When I was young you fought the guy in the next street. But it wasn’t so vicious then. We fought with our fists. Now they fight with knives and guns.
• I shared a flat with Terence Stamp. I understudied Peter O’Toole. I remember being in Liverpool and going to see a matinée with a young actor nobody had ever heard of called Albert Finney. Oh, a tremendous wave. It was ridiculous. I knew a writer who wanted to write musicals called Lionel Bart, a painter called Francis Bacon.
• The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent, and if it goes to 51, I will be back in America. I will not pay the Government more than I get. No way, ever. They’ve reached their limit with me, and that’s what will happen to a lot of people. You know how much they made out of that high taxation all those years ago? Nothing. But they sent a mass of incredible brains to America. This return to high tax will only deepen our debt. While top-earners will be hit by the highest tax in 20 years, our MPs escape Scot-free. We’ve got three-and-a-half million layabouts laying about on benefits, and I’m 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them. Let’s get everybody back to work so we can save a couple of billion and cut tax, not keep sticking it on.
• My father said nothing, but I know that he thought I’d just confessed to being gay. Back then, everyone thought all actors were gay, and most of them were right. But it must have been the right move – did you know that the only good word you can make from ‘Michael Caine’ is ‘cinema’? I discovered that in a crossword 10 years ago.
• It should have been a hindrance, but I have a phrase which I taught my children: ‘Use the difficulty.’ Where I came from, nobody even knew what a drama school was, and everyone thought you couldn’t become an actor unless you talked posh. Class is still there but it’s less relevant now. You don’t need to have gone to a certain kind of school to have done that [become an actor] like you did back then.
• Brown’s (Gordon Brown) never been elected by anybody. I’m supposed to be in a country where I get the chance to elect someone and I’m around here at the most dangerous of times led by a man who’s never been elected. You’ve gotta be elected. A political party that’s in too long is like a piece of meat – if it’s there too long it will go rotten and they’ve gone rotten and they’ve gotta go.
• I’ve had such a great time, I’d like to come back as me – and do it all over again.
• [on playing Clarence in Is Anybody There? (2008)] I’m my own worst critic. I spend my entire life trying to get it absolutely right. There are other actors who could do it better, but I’m proud of it. There’s no Michael Caine there, there’s no ego there. You just see poor old Clarence.
• Old? I stopped ageing at 38. I still am 38 . . . except when they say, ‘Run up those stairs.’
• [When he told his parents he wanted to act, they assumed he was gay.] That’s what we thought actors were, all poofs. And sometimes we were right.
• On learning acting in postwar Britain: There was a whole generation of English theatre actors who’d do a film in order to buy a car or a refrigerator, but really thought it was beneath them.
• On his first days in Hollywood: It was amazing to see Fred Astaire doing his food shopping.
• When he was nominated for an Oscar for Educating Rita (1983): Irene Dunne and Loretta Young stopped me and said, ‘We both voted for you.’ I couldn’t believe it!
• After eight years in Hollywood: Weather always the same. Nothing to talk about. No seasons. My gardener told me that if I wanted to grow daffodils, I’d have to keep them in the fridge for five weeks so they’d think they were in England. But I couldn’t put them in the fridge because I thought the maid would make onion soup out of them and poison the bloody lot of us.
• [on some of his mid-career flops] I did a couple of pictures which were absolutely dreadful – one was Blue Ice (1992), and another with Olivier, where I played a spy based on Philby [The Jigsaw Man (1983).] I thought there was no need to put myself through it. I had enough money. I opened eight restaurants, goofed around in Miami, until Jack Nicholson persuaded me to do Blood and Wine (1996) with him and restored my faith in the business.
• While shooting Harry Brown (2009): The young guys I met there were fascinated by my success. They asked how I got out of there. I told them the truth – I had a happy family. My mum and dad were together all the time. I won a scholarship to grammar school. And there was drink, but not drugs.
• Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you’ve had a life like mine, you have to.
• I love HD. Of course, it’s very unforgiving, especially on young beautiful ladies, but thank God I’m old, I don’t care.
• [on Ray Milland] A nice old bloke.
• [on Otto Preminger] O.P. is only happy if everybody else is miserable. Still, if you can keep his paranoia from beating you down, you can learn a lot from the guy.
• Educating Rita (1983) was wonderful, I did it with Julie Walters, the original girl. She is sensational, really fantastic, and she is a very nice person as well, which is always a bonus.
• [on Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker] The worry going in was The Joker. Jack Nicholson was the greatest Joker so, you know, how do you top that? Well, Heath Ledger’s done it and he’s extraordinary. He’s gone in a completely different direction to Jack. Jack was like a clown figure, benign but wicked, maybe a killer old uncle. He could be funny and make you laugh. Heath is like a really scary psychopath. I did one scene with him and he was ready to go and had to come up in a lift and raid our place. I didn’t see him for rehearsal and when he came out of the lift he was so incredible I forgot my lines. He frightened the life out of me. I’d never met him before. He’s a lovely guy and his Joker is going to be a hell of a revelation in this picture.
• I’ve made an awful lot of films. In fact, I’ve made a lot of awful films.
• [about remakes of his classic films such as Get Carter (1971) and The Italian Job (1969)] I wish they would remake the BAD ones!
• I’m a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.
• Don’t remake a successful picture, because you’re liable to be the flop. Steve Martin and I made a much better picture of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) than Marlon Brando and David Niven did. What I wouldn’t do anymore is play any guest shots. I’ve given that up. I did it as some fun and it backfired in Get Carter (2000) so I’m not doing it again. Now I hear that they’re going to remake The Italian Job (1969) with me in the Noël Coward part. I’d consider it, yes.
• I’m the original bourgeois nightmare – a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.
• In England I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.
• I’ll always be around because I’m a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I’ve any talent is beside the point.
• You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.
• Such is an actor’s life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes.
• [on Richard Gere] He’s got a pin-up image, which he hates. The only trouble is this: whenever they ask him to take his trousers off, he does.
• [on Alfie (1966)] To be a movie star, you have to carry a movie. And to carry a movie where you play the title role is the supreme example. The third thing, for a British actor, is to do it in America. The fourth is to get nominated for an award. That picture did all four things for me.
• Whenever anyone asks me to do something about my life’s work, I keep saying, “Please, I haven’t finished yet. Can you give me another year?” . . . In a lifetime achievement award, you just have to watch yourself grow old in 45 minutes.
• I did Harold Pinter’s first play, “The Room”. Harold was an actor named David Baron. He said, “I’m going to write”. I said, “Oh yeah, it’ll be nice”. He said, “But I don’t want to get mixed up with being an actor. I’m going to write with my real name”. I said, “What’s your real name, David?” He said, “Harold Pinter”.
• My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much.
• It’s terrible. Every six weeks it’s Christmas. In Catch-22 (1970), the hero says, “Time is going by so fast, I have to make my life more boring.” That’s what I’ve got to do, because my life is so interesting and I enjoy myself so much, I’ve got to make it more tedious, because I’ll be 100 in a minute. My mother died when she was 90, so I’ve got just under 20 years left. The terrible thing is that in obituaries, you read, “He died at 74, he had a good life.” You think, “Bloody hell, I’ve only got 18 months to go”. And another strange thing about aging – as you get older, it gets faster, and you see people you haven’t seen in what you think is five years, but it turns out to be 25 years. You say, “I made that film ten years ago,” and they correct me: “Thirty, Michael. Thirty”.
• My view is that you should always do remakes of failures. Then you’ve got nowhere to go but up, you know? They can’t say, “Well, it’s not as good as the original, you made a piece of crap”. They’d just say, “What a piece of crap that was,” anyway.
• [In reference to the Oscar Family Album Tribute sequence at The 70th Annual Academy Awards (1998) and speaking live on British television following the Oscar ceremony in 1998] I was sat up there with the likes of Claire Trevor and Luise Rainer. It means a lot to me, it was amazing, they are living legends!
• [on doing the Texan accent for Secondhand Lions (2003)] I had a great dialect coach and he told me there’s always one moment when you get something. He said, “Do your Texan accent for me,” when I had learned it from a tape. He said, “It’s too English!”. I said, “Why?”. He said, “Each word stands up like soldiers standing to attention next to each other. The way they talk in Texas, they’re so lazy they sort of lean on each word”. And I could just picture all these words leaning over each other, and that’s when I got it.
• Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.
• The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this–a movie star will say, “How can I change the script to suit me?” and a movie actor will say. “How can I change me to suit the script?”
• First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don’t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.
• The best research [for playing a drunk] is being a British actor for 20 years.
• Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I’ve tried it 85 times, and I’ve succeeded two or three times.
• I used to get the girl; now I get the part. In The Quiet American (2002) you may have noticed I got the part and the girl. It’s a milestone for me, because it’s the last time I’m going to get the girl. I’m sure of it, now I’m nearly seventy.
• I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.
• [on Jaws: The Revenge (1987)] I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.
• My name is Michael Caine.
• [in 1967] I’ve never been out with a married woman, never. I respect others’ properties.

Michael Caine Important Facts

• $20,000 /week
• $250,000
• £4,000
• Ranked 10th highest grossing actor of all time with his previous films grossing $3.2 billion.[2016].
• Acting mentor and friend of Julie Walters.
• Although often listed as 6’2″, Caine himself gave his height as 6’1″ in his 1992 autobiography “What’s It All About?”.
• When he was still a struggling actor, Caine shared a London flat with future hairstylist-guru Vidal Sassoon.
• Though he had been considered for, but never appeared in a Bond movie, Caine was the very first person to hear the completed film score for Goldfinger (1964). After he and roommate Terence Stamp were both ejected from their apartment, Caine asked composer friend John Barry if he could use the spare bedroom at Barry’s London residence. As they were good friends, Barry agreed and so for several months Caine crashed with Barry and was there the sleepless night he completed his iconic score. At breakfast the following morning Barry played his composition for Caine, the first time he’d performed it for anybody.
• In 2009, he praised Christoph Waltz’s performance as Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009), saying that it was the “best performance of a villain” he’s seen in years.
• He turned down the role of David Dilbeck in Striptease (1996) that went to Burt Reynolds.
• He claimed that the worst films he ever made were The Magus (1968), _The Swarm (1978)_(qv and Ashanti (1979).
• He was offered the role of Arthur Seldom in The Oxford Murders (2008) that went to John Hurt.
• He was considered to play ‘C.S. Lewis’ in Shadowlands (1993).
• He was considered for the role of Bart in Unleashed (2005) that went to Bob Hoskins.
• He was considered for the role of Ben du Toit in A Dry White Season (1989) that went to Donald Sutherland.
• He was the first choice for the role of Marvin in City of Ghosts (2002) that went to James Caan.
• He was considered for the role of Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
• He turned down the role of Captain Smith in Titanic (1997).
• He turned the role of Josiah Samuel Smith in the Doctor Who (1963) serial “Ghost Light”. The role went to Ian Hogg.
• He turned down the role of Staff Sergeant Williams in The Hill (1965) in order to star in Alfie (1966). The role went to Ian Hendry.
• He was considered for the lead role in Tootsie (1982).
• He was considered for the title role in Fellini’s Casanova (1976).
• He turned down the role of Col. John Stewart in Khartoum (1966) that went to Richard Johnson.
• He turned down the role of Patrick Dalton Six Weeks (1982) that went to Dudley Moore.
• He was considered to star opposite Sean Connery in Saturn 3 (1980). The roles went to Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel.
• He turned down the role of Maurice Castle in The Human Factor (1979) that went to Nicol Williamson.
• He was considered for the title role in Sebastian (1968) that went to Dirk Bogarde.
• He wanted to play The Jackal in The Day of the Jackal (1973), but was turned down by director Fred Zinnemann, because he felt that the role shouldn’t be played by a star.
• He was originally cast as Private Wilkes in Guns at Batasi (1964). John Leyton replaced him.
• He turned down the role of Jolly in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982) in order to star in Educating Rita (1983). The role went to James Caan.
• He was going to star in The Dresser (1983) with Orson Welles in the early 1980s. His role went to Tom Courtenay.
• He turned down the role of PC Bob Steele in Z Cars (1962).
• He turned down both of the male leads in Women in Love (1969) because he refused to do any nudity. The roles went to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed.
• He was considered for Sean Connery’s roles in Highlander (1986) and The Name of the Rose (1986).
• He tried out for the role of Lieutenant Scott-Padget in Damn the Defiant! (1962) which went to Dirk Bogarde.
• He turned down the role of John L. Sullivan IV in Switching Channels (1988) in order to be in Jaws: The Revenge (1987). The role went to Burt Reynolds.
• He turned down the role of Col. Colin Caine in Lifeforce (1985) that went to Peter Firth.
• He revealed in his autobiography that he that he also read for Doctor Yuri Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965) and participated in the screen shots with Julie Christie, but (after watching the results with David Lean) was the one who suggested Omar Sharif.
• He was considered for the role of Mark Wallace in Two for the Road (1967) that went to Albert Finney.
• Attended the wedding of media mogul Rupert Murdoch to former model Jerry Hall in 2016.
• Publicly called for the UK to leave the European Union in January 2016.
• He has two roles in common with Jude Law: (1) Caine played Alfie Elkins in Alfie (1966) while Law played him in Alfie (2004) and (2) Caine played Milo Tindle in Sleuth (1972) while Law played him in Sleuth (2007), in which Caine played Andrew Wyke.
• He appeared in four films with Laurence Olivier: Battle of Britain (1969), Sleuth (1972), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and The Jigsaw Man (1983).
• In every film where Caine and Christopher Nolan make a collaboration, Caine’s character either assists, guides, trains or educates the protagonist of each film. In The Prestige (2006), Caine portrays a magician who teaches the main character the art of illusion. For ‘The Dark Knight trilogy’, Caine plays a butler to the Wayne family, where he supports, nurtures and loves the main character Bruce Wayne (Batman). During Inception (2010), Caine depicts the father of the main protagonist, Cobb, and aids him by recruiting one of his students. In Interstellar (2014), Caine portrays a professor/engineer, who invites and encourages the central character, Cooper, to lead an important space mission that will determine the future of planet earth.
• Of the six performers who have won Oscars for performances in films directed by Woody Allen, he is the only man. The others are Diane Keaton, Dianne Wiest (twice), Mira Sorvino, Penelope Cruz, and Cate Blanchett.
• As of 2014, has appeared in four films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Alfie (1966), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The Cider House Rules (1999), Inception (2010).
• Caine and fellow Brit Michael Gough, who both played Alfred Pennyworth in “Batman” movies, have also both had roles in different productions of “A Christmas Carol” (Caine as Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) and Gough as Mr. Poole in A Christmas Carol (1984) with George C. Scott).
• In Chicago Illinois filming The Dark Knight (2008). [August 2007]
• Visiting the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, England [June 2010]
• As of 2013, he has three grandchildren, a granddaughter and two grandsons.
• Favorite film is The Third Man (1949).
• Claims that his trick to being able to cry on cue is thinking about a painful childhood memory.
• Stated that for years he hated the smell of garlic as he associated it with his service in the Korean War where North Korean and Chinese troops would munch it as a snack. He eventually overcame his dislike upon becoming a restauranteur.
• Educating Rita (1983) is his favourite film of his own, and the performance he’s the most proud of.
• Supports Chelsea FC.
• For more than forty years, Caine’s mother, Ellen Maria Burchell, paid periodic visits to a “cousin” in a mental hospital. When she died in 1989, Caine learned that the cousin was really his elder brother, David.
• Publicly supported Conservative Party leader David Cameron for Prime Minister in the 2010 General Election.
• Lives in Fetcham, Surrey, United Kingdom.
• Confirmed in an interview with “The Mail on Sunday” newspaper on 1 November 2009 that he has dropped his support for Labour and will vote Conservative at the next General Election.
• Chosen by GQ magazine as one of the 50 Most Stylish Men in the Past 50 Years.
• In an interview with “The Sunday Telegraph” on 26 April 2009, Caine admitted that he is considering becoming a tax exile again if Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown increases taxes on high earners.
• He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.
• Once said that he knew he’d made it as an actor when he started getting scripts to read that no longer had coffee stains already on them (meaning that he was the first choice for that role).
• His all-time favorite actor, his inspiration to become an actor and his hero is Humphrey Bogart.
• He is famous for the catch-phrase “Not a lot of people know that”, though he never actually said it. The phrase was probably first said by Peter Sellers when he appeared Parkinson (1971) on 28 October 1972 and said: “Not many people know that. This is my Michael Caine impression. You see, Mike’s always quoting from the Guinness Book of Records. At the drop of a hat he’ll trot one out. ‘Did you know that it takes a man in a tweed suit five and a half seconds to fall from the top of Big Ben to the ground?’ Now there’s not many people who know that!”.
• Alfie (1966) and Sleuth (1972) were both remade with Jude Law taking over his role.
• Has appeared in the remakes of two of his films: Get Carter (2000) and Sleuth (2007).
• Originally had the lead role of Switching Channels (1988) but was held up by production delays on Jaws: The Revenge (1987).
• While he uses “Michael Caine” professionally, he used his given name in his personal life until he decided to officially change his name to Michael Caine in 2016. He said in an interview that the reason was that he was losing too much time at the reinforced safety checks in airports because the name on his passport did not match his stage name.
• 12/18/05: Attended the party at his close friend Sir Elton John’s Old Windsor mansion after the singer married David Furnish in a civil partnership ceremony.
• Turned down Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972).
• Has been nominated for an Oscar at least once in five consecutive decades (1960s-2000s).
• An ardent Thatcherite during the 1980s, Caine switched his support to Tony Blair’s New Labour Party shortly before the 1997 General Election.
• 1979: Left England for tax reasons, and did not return until 1987.
• Visited John Wayne several times when the veteran star was dying of cancer in hospital.
• Mike Myers said that he based the character of Austin Powers partially on Caine’s character in Alfie (1966). Caine would play Austin Powers father in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002).
• Allegedly did not get along with Steven Seagal while filming On Deadly Ground (1994).
• Near the end of The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), he passes by a store called “Micklewhite’s.” His real name is Maurice Micklewhite.
• Superstar Swedish rock band Kent refer to him in their song “Palace and Main”
• In 1957, at Brighton University, Caine appeared in a one-act play written by a fellow actor who went by the name of David Baron. It was Baron’s very first play. He later changed his name back to Harold Pinter, the name under which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.
• Was the first person to be nominated for an acting Razzie award for more than one title. He was nominated for Worst Actor of 1980 at the very first Razzie awards for his roles in the films Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Island (1980).
• Throughout the 1960s he was by his own estimation drinking two bottles of vodka and smoking at least eighty cigarettes a day. He quit smoking cigarettes following a stern lecture from Tony Curtis at a party in 1971, and finally quit smoking cigars shortly before his 70th birthday in 2003.
• Is close friends with Sir Sean Connery, Sir Roger Moore, Sir Elton John and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
• The soundstage at Shepperton Studios, in which he filmed Batman Begins (2005), is also the one where he filmed his very first film, Hell in Korea (1956).
• Has stated that the character of Vichy war criminal Pierre Brossard in The Statement (2003) was his least favorite. He said that all the other characters he played in his career, whether good or evil, had a sense of humor on some level that he would try to convey in his performance. He felt that Brossard had no sense of humor whatsoever, in part because the character was such an intense man.
• 1987: Was not present at the Academy Awards ceremony when he won best supporting actor for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) because he was filming Jaws: The Revenge (1987), for which he was nominated for worst supporting actor at the Razzie awards the following year.
• Three of his memorable films (Alfie (1966), The Italian Job (1969), and Get Carter (1971)) have all been remade.
• Lobbied for the lead role in The Day of the Jackal (1973) but was rejected by director Fred Zinnemann, who felt that the character of The Jackal, who essentially is a cipher, should not be played by a movie star.
• 2001: Was voted fifth in the Orange Film Survey of greatest British actors.
• “Michael Caine”, a top 10 song in Britain in the mid-’80s by the group Madness, had his “My Name Is Michael Caine” quote sampled into the song.
• Lodged with composer John Barry in the early 1960s for a few months, after being forced to leave his own flat, penniless. He returned the favor in 1998 when agreeing to introduce the composer’s Royal Albert Hall concert – his first in the UK for 25 years.
• The role of Alfie was turned down by Anthony Newley and Terence Stamp before it was offered to him.
• Has two brothers. Younger brother Stanley Caine appeared in at least three of Caine’s films: Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Play Dirty (1969) and The Italian Job (1969). He did not know about his elder half-brother David until their mother died. David suffered from epilepsy and had lived in a hospital his entire life.
• The production offices of Mona Lisa (1986) were located in the disused St Olave’s hospital, the very hospital in which Caine was born.
• Father, with the late Patricia Haines, of Dominique (aka Nikki).
• Father, with Shakira Caine, of Natasha.
• He owns seven restaurants: six in London, one in Miami.
• 11/16/00: Formally knighted at Buckingham Palace under his real name of Maurice Micklewhite. He will be known professionally as Sir Michael Caine.
• He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2000 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his contribution to the performing arts.
• Shared a London flat with actor Terence Stamp early in his career.
• Took his name from the film The Caine Mutiny (1954)
• Owns his own film production company.
• He was awarded the CBE (Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire) in the 1992 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to drama.
• 1987: Awarded British Variety Club Award for Best Film Actor.
• Co-owned top London restaurant Langan’s Brasserie.
• 10/87: Ranked #55 in Empire (UK) magazine’s “The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time” list.
• His first American accent was in the film Hurry Sundown (1967). He was taught the Southern drawl by Vivien Leigh, who told him to say “four door Ford” all day long for weeks. (source – “What’s it all about?” Michael Caine’s autobiography – 1992)

Michael Caine Filmography

Michael Caine Awards