The story of how Christopher Nolan first met Michael Caine
A true paragon of British acting virtue, Michael Caine has left a strong impression on cinema from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean across a career spanning over six decades. Time and time again, Caine has proven his acting excellence in a wide range of roles, from charming father figures to hardened gangsters.
During that time, Caine was afforded the opportunity to work with some well-considered directors, including Mike Hodges, John Huston, Woody Allen and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Of course, one also ought not to forget the several contributions Caine has made to the films of Christopher Nolan.
“I’m his lucky charm, so if there’s no part in the movie for me, he writes one. And he pays me a lot of money,” Caine once told Aubrey Plaza of Nolan for Interview magazine. “He and I have made eight movies together that have taken in over a billion dollars, so now he won’t do a picture without me.”
Indeed, Caine does seem to be another favoured actor of Nolan’s. Alongside stars like Cillian Murphy, and following 2005’s Batman Begins, he featured in The Prestige, Inception, The Dark Knight, Interstellar and several others, and was even offered a role in Oppenheimer, which he turned down.
“I was at my house in the country on a Sunday morning, and the doorbell rang, so I answered it,” Caine explained of his first meeting with Nolan. “There was a man standing there with a script in his hand. I thought, ‘This must be a director.’ I said, ‘What’s your name?’ He said, ‘It’s Christopher Nolan.’”
“I knew his name immediately because he’d made three brilliant movies, but they were small,” Caine went on. “And I thought, ‘Oh, this is great. He’s going to ask me to be in one of these small movies, and it’ll be fantastic.’ And then I said, ‘Come in,’ and I gave him a cup of tea.”
By that point, Nolan had indeed made only three movies, his 1998 debut Following, 2000’s Memento and 2002’s Insomnia, and Batman Begins was about to set off the rest of the director’s career. Perhaps Caine thought the next film would follow his previous three, not knowing that Nolan was about to take on one of the most beloved stories in modern cinema.
Caine continued, “I said, ‘Now, what’s the movie?’ And he said, ‘It’s called Batman Begins.’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m too old to play Batman, so I’m probably the butler.’ So I said to him, ‘Am I the butler?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, you’re the butler.’ So I said, ‘What do I say? Dinner is served? Would you like another glass of wine?’”
Naturally, Caine had thought that his part was to be a small role, not knowing that he was about to be offered one of the most important parts of his entire career and one of the most significant pieces of the Batman cinematic cannon. The actor signed off on the story, “And he said, ‘Michael, the butler was his foster father. His father died, and the butler brought him up, so he’s very important, and it’s a very good part. Read the bloody script.’”
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