Watch Michael Caine discuss some of his best films
Michael Caine is simply a national treasure and remains one of the most beloved British actors of all time. Caine has enjoyed a sterling career spanning more than seven gloriously decorated decades. Here, the two-time Academy Award winner discusses some of his greatest achievements.
One of Caine’s best works is 1988’s comedy classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in which he starred alongside comedy legend Steve Martin in a story about two conmen trying to swindle an heiress out of her fortune. Caine explained that the difference between his and Martin’s acting styles is what made the film so great.
“I read the script, and it was a riot,” he said. “Steve Martin is such a wonderful person to work with; he’s fabulous. The secret of that movie is that I was completely serious at all times, and he was very funny. If I’d tried to be funny, it’s not funny. He was funny because he was eccentric, but I was a real person, so I could never do anything funny, and that’s what made it funny.”
Caine also appeared in an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s novella The Man Who Would Be King, which tells of two ex-British Army soldiers who go on an adventure through 19th Century British India. The film was directed by John Huston, and Caine explained the legendary director’s unique approach to his craft.
“He never said anything to you; he never gave you any direction,” he said. “I was doing a take, and it was a long monologue, and halfway through – I hadn’t done anything wrong – he went, ‘Cut’. And he gave me my character in one line. He went, ‘You can speak faster, Michael; he’s an honest man’. And I’ve been very suspicious of people who talk slowly ever since.”
Perhaps one of Caine’s most iconic films, though, is 1966’s Alfie, which focuses on a young, self-absorbed, womanising man who experiences a change of direction in life when he begins to question whether his behaviours are making him unhappy and lonely. Caine told a funny anecdote about a close friend of his and his opinion on the character.
“I’ll tell you a funny thing about Alfie,” he began. “I had a very close friend who was a Frenchman, and Alfie died in France. And I said to this French friend of mine, ‘Alfie died in France, you know? Why do you think that is?’ He said, ‘Well, no Frenchman could believe that an Englishman could seduce ten women.’ So I said, ‘Thank you very much.’”
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