Michael Caine names his most miscast role: “One of the monumental examples”
Emerging to acclaim in the 1960s, Michael Caine soon became known for playing gangsters that you couldn’t help but root for, with his horn-rimmed glasses and suave appearance giving him instant appeal. From playing a womanising Cockney in Alfie to a revenge-seeking criminal in Get Carter, the actor triumphed as one of Britain’s finest stars.
Caine came from a more relatable background compared to many stars that dominated the country at the time, helping to usher in a new wave of working-class actors who were interested in revealing a grittier and more realistic portrayal of life. While he earned a taste of Hollywood success with his first Oscar nomination for Alfie in 1966, the actor remained committed to many British productions for years, and only in the late 1970s did he start to branch out, eventually starring in various Hollywood blockbusters of varying quality.
Caine’s filmography is somewhat mixed bag, with many Hollywood hits sitting firmly under his belt as varied as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Miss Congeniality, and The Dark Knight. While Caine has taken on respectable projects for the most part (not including Jaws: The Revenge, of course), he has rarely strayed into territory that you could call ‘experimental’ or perhaps ‘artsy’.
Yet, in 1975, he appeared in a film that saw him get as close to this category as possible, but he couldn’t help feeling woefully miscast. In his book What’s It All About, Caine wrote, “It was called The Romantic Englishwoman and was my first (and hopefully last) foray into the realms of ‘artistic films’. If for nothing else, this film should go down in film history as one of the monumental examples of triple miscasting!”
Directed by Joseph Losey, who’d also helmed movies like The Damned, The Go-Between, and Secret Ceremony, Caine was excited to work with a filmmaker he admired. He explained, “The film was not only very convoluted it was also downright grim, but I decided to do it because of the director, Joe Losey, who had a tremendous reputation for being ‘artistic’, but better than that, had made a couple of pictures that had actually produced a profit without being discarded by the critics. One of them was a favourite of mine – The Servant.”
The Michael Caine movie miscast
Yet, once he was cast in the film, he soon realised that he was not right for the part at all. Known for playing rather tough and headstrong characters, he ended up playing a rather submissive husband in Losey’s film, and while Caine has plenty of acting range, he simply didn’t feel as though he suited his character.
“Glenda Jackson was to play my lovelorn and romantic wife, Helmut Berger the insatiable seducer of women and I a wimpish husband who stood by and did nothing while his wife was being unfaithful right before his eyes,” Caine wrote. The actor is hardly the vision of a weak and acquiescent husband, so he wasn’t sure if audiences would believe his role as a “wimpish” character.
Still, with an incredibly impressive cast, the movie was well-received by critics. Caine doesn’t think it’s one of his best, however, preferring not to look back on the project that he simply found too bleak of an experience.
“Joe seemed to be a very nice man on our first meeting, but he also had a rather grim face and outlook on life,” he added. “On the first day of shooting I bet one of the crew ten pounds that I could make Joe laugh before the end of the film – and I lost my money.”
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