Michael Caine celebrated his big break with projectile vomit: “I did not ooze star quality”
When Michael Caine landed what many consider his first big break, the actor claimed that he “did not ooze star quality”. Sadly, he oozed something much more disgusting.
Caine had spent the early years of his acting career working in a theatre, a job he’d landed after returning from serving in the army. Caine found a few bit parts on stage and eventually on the screen, but it wasn’t until he appeared in a certain war film that he found himself one step closer to success.
Zulu, released in 1964, saw Caine land his first major role that wasn’t merely an uncredited part. It was a huge starting point for the actor, who had come from a working-class background – just a few years prior, he’d been working in a butter factory.
Yet, Caine was overwhelmed by the news that he had actually got the part in Cy Endfield’s depiction of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift. He couldn’t believe it – he was going to be a star. Reflecting on his experience of landing the role, Caine wrote in his book Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, “Beyond chasing Chinese soldiers through no man’s land, my screen test for the part of the aristocratic and effete Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in Zulu was the single most nerve-racking thing I’ve ever done. Stanley [Baker, producer] and Cy could not have been kinder or more patient but it was a complete disaster”.
“I did not ooze star quality. I oozed sweat, panic and abject terror.”
Michael Caine
Despite the fact that Caine was convinced his screen test had gone terribly, he got the part. It seems as though Endfield and Baker recognised something in the actor that he himself had not identified. “That weekend Cy came up to me at a party. ‘I’ve seen the test,’ he told me. ‘And it’s the worst I’ve ever seen.’ Time to tense those stomach muscles again. ‘But I don’t know, Michael, I think there’s something there. You’ve got the part,’” the actor wrote.
Adding, “He walked away and, before I could instruct my stomach muscles to stand down, I had thrown up all over my shoes. I felt like a champion, despite my ruined shoes. Somehow, I had kept riding the punches. It’s the same in any enterprise, whatever you’re trying to accomplish. You never know when your moment will arrive, and you don’t want to be on the floor and out for the count when it does.”
Poor Caine might’ve had vomit on his feet, but he could stand safe in the knowledge that he was going to have a big role in a film. The movie was highly acclaimed, and within a few years, Caine was an Academy Award nominee, having earned a ‘Best Actor’ nomination for his first leading role in the Lewis Gilbert film Alfie.
Since then, Caine has become one of Britain’s biggest stars, appearing in many acclaimed movies in his native country as well as various Hollywood vehicles, winning two Oscars (for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules respectively) and becoming known as a national treasure.
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