The classic Michael Caine movie Cary Grant refused to star in: “It would be too much work”
Hollywood’s biggest stars tend to turn down the most roles because every major studio and notable filmmaker in the business would bend over backwards for a chance to work with them. As a genuine icon and era-defining leading man, Cary Grant knocked back more than most.
His body of work was accomplished as it was, but it’s fascinating to think how he would have fared had he agreed to play just one of the countless parts he rejected. Grant could have played firmly against type in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, only for the actor to decide he wasn’t comfortable with such button-pushing and controversial material.
He was at the top of the wish list when Ian Fleming and Cubby Broccoli were on the hunt for their first James Bond, which could have altered the course of cinema history. Grant was open to the idea but only wanted to play 007 once, but the insistence that the contract extend through multiple pictures ruled him out, opened the door for Sean Connery, and set the stage for 60 years of success.
Grant could have shared the screen with John Wayne in Red River, won an Academy Award for My Fair Lady and been a key part of a seminal noir in The Third Man, but he wasn’t interested. When a bespectacled rising star named Michael Caine crossed the Atlantic to begin making a name for himself in Hollywood, Grant was just one of the many legends he befriended along the way.
In fact, Caine’s ascent was so rapid that he even managed to eclipse Grant’s star power when they were hobnobbing at a Beverly Hills hotel in 1968 when an enthusiastic young fan approached the pair and didn’t even recognise one of the most famous faces in Hollywood after being so starstruck by the working-class lad from Rotherhithe.
The pair knew each other and travelled in several of the same circles, but they could have cemented their bond by starring in a picture together. Caine earned the second Oscar nomination of his career for Joseph L Mankiewicz’s mystery thriller Sleuth, which pitted him against a monolithic figure in Laurence Olivier.
However, it could have been Grant, but he couldn’t be arsed. “I was asked to do the movie of Sleuth,” he confirmed to Guy Flatley. “But in the end, I decided it would be too much work. I mean, I’ve done all that almost 70 times, and it’s a tiresome and very strenuous business.”
Grant had retired from acting following 1966’s romantic comedy Walk, Don’t Run, and he was inundated with offers to make a comeback in the following years. His mind couldn’t be swayed, though, robbing audiences of seeing him pit his wits against Caine in a classic.
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