“They always gave me the benefit of the doubt”: Michael Caine explains the cunning plan behind his legendary career
Having retired as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest-ever acting exports and an all-round legend of cinema, Michael Caine can reflect on a job well done that took him from humble beginnings to the very top of the industry.
Once he got there, it wasn’t a position he was willing to give up all too easily, although there were ups and downs, as there tend to be in any career that spans more than 70 years. It’s impossible for any actor to meticulously plan out their trajectory in advance, but Caine self-deprecatingly suggested he could.
By the mid-1970s, he was already one of the biggest British stars of his generation. Caine followed his breakthrough role in Zulu with the anti-Bond espionage drama The Ipcress File, his first Academy Award-nominated performance in Alfie, the heist caper Gambit, the crime classic The Italian Job, the revenge thriller Get Carter, and the enigmatic Sleuth. It was a hot streak, to put it lightly, but it couldn’t last forever.
Caine’s Hollywood detour boasted more than a few hits, but there was also dreck like The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. His star had diminished so much by the early 1990s that he’d considered abandoning acting altogether to focus on becoming a restaurateur.
Fortunately, Jack Nicholson convinced him that playing the villain in shitty Steven Seagal flicks wasn’t the best use of his time, and by the turn of the millennium, Caine had been re-established as a distinguished veteran ready to inject any production, no matter how big or small with his effortless gravitas.
When quizzed by Movies about what drove his late-career renaissance into alternating massive blockbusters, including Batman Begins and Austin Powers in Goldmember, with prestige fare, such as Children of Men and The Weather Man, the two-time Academy Award winner suggested it was deliberate.
“You see, it’s all part of my cunning plan,” he said before acknowledging the peaks and valleys he’d experienced beforehand. “I have been written off quite a few times, though, but each time, my career gets reassessed when a certain film breaks through, and suddenly, I’m loved again. I’ve been up and down so many times I’ve lost count, but I think the media has lost count, too, and so now they give me the benefit of the doubt.”
There was a period where Caine became so disenchanted with the roles – or lack thereof – being offered his way that he was ready to down tools forever and call it quits. It wasn’t quite a resurgence when it spanned for roughly 25 years and won him a second Oscar, but that renewed vigour was born from the steely determination of knowing full well he’d been written off before, with Caine determined to end up having the last laugh.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Michael Caine Newsletter
All the latest stories about Michael Caine from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.