How Michael Caine really felt on the biggest night of his career: “It was terrible”
The goals of any actor entering the movie business will differ dramatically depending on the person. Some young hopefuls might see themselves becoming the biggest box office attraction in the business, while others would be satisfied simply making a steady living from acting. Most actors, however, would be lying if they said they didn’t occasionally daydream about stepping onto the stage at the Academy Awards to accept an Oscar. That would be the biggest night of anyone’s career, no matter how grand or humble their aspirations—but when it happened to Michael Caine, he realised reaching the top of the mountain isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.
In the early 1980s, Caine was at an interesting crossroads in his career. He had been a bonafide movie star for nearly 20 years, having broken through in the early ’60s with roles in classics like Zulu, The Ipcress File and The Italian Job. He cemented that stardom in the ’70s with Get Carter, The Man Who Would Be King, and The Eagle Has Landed. However, after winning acclaim for Educating Rita in 1983, he entered a bit of a wonky period, with disasters like Water and The Holcroft Covenant failing to make much of a mark.
The iconic Cockney star then starred in two polar opposite movies in 1986 and 1987. First up was the Woody Allen comedy drama Hannah and Her Sisters, which saw Caine take a supporting role alongside a who’s who of female talents, including Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, and Carrie Fisher. This movie was released in early 1986 and became Allen’s biggest hit for many years, while Caine also received his best reviews in a long time.
Infamously, though, Caine chose to follow up this acclaimed picture with an ill-advised turn in Jaws: The Revenge, the third laughably atrocious sequel to Steven Spielberg’s shark blockbuster. It was resoundingly lambasted from all corners, and people wondered why Caine would lower himself to starring in the fourth Jaws film. Hilariously, though, he confessed, “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!” You’ve got to give the man points for honesty, at least.
To make the situation even more absurd, though, this was the year Caine found out he’d landed his first Oscar nomination. When he discovered he would be battling for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ thanks to his performance in Hannah and Her Sisters, though, he was dumbfounded.
You see, he never considered it an Oscar contender for two reasons: Allen was notorious for hating the Academy Awards, and the movie was released in January, before the previous year’s ceremony. “There was no campaign for me or anything,” Caine chuckled to HuffPost in 2012. “I didn’t know I was going to get nominated. No one ever mentioned the Oscar to me until the nominations came out.”
To Caine’s chagrin, the Oscars took place while he was stuck in the Bahamas toiling away on a Jaws movie he didn’t really care about. “Of course, that was the bloody week when the Academy Awards were on, so I wasn’t even there,” he groused. “The whole thing came right out of the blue, you know?”
So, on the biggest night of his career, instead of rubbing shoulders with his fellow nominees at a glitzy Oscar ceremony, Caine found himself struggling to adjust the antenna on a tiny hotel TV just to catch a glimpse of the proceedings.
“It was terrible. I was in a hotel suite, and in those days, you had to wriggle the bloody aerial on the top of the television to get a picture.”
michael caine
To add insult to injury, he didn’t even know he’d won the Little Gold Man in real time. He was glumly staring at a blank screen when his wife and daughter, watching the Oscars at a Los Angeles party, phoned him to give him the good news. Talk about being brought crashing back down to Earth.
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