Michael Caine names the most important movie of his career: “It came out at exactly the right time”
With a career that stretched 70 years and ended with Michael Caine bowing out with his head held high as one of Britain’s greatest-ever cinematic exports, it goes without saying that he made plenty of important movies before stepping away from the industry he’d dedicated his entire life to.
Much like any star who displayed such remarkable longevity, there were also plenty of misses to go along with the hits. Caine would be the first to admit it, too, having taken great joy in picking apart the worst entries in his filmography and justifying his reasons for signing on for so many notorious misfires, which more often than not tended to be because the money was too good to turn down.
The two-time Academy Award winner was more than a decade into his career before he achieved a breakthrough, but once he made his biggest mainstream impression to date, he didn’t waste any time capitalising. Zulu was the 18th feature he’d been a part of, but it was the only one that mattered after Caine quickly used it as a springboard to much bigger and better things.
Fast-forward to a decade after the 1964 historical epic’s release, and he was a made man. Caine had added espionage classic The Ipcress File, timeless heist caper The Italian Job, fleet-footed crime comedy Gambit, crunching gangster thriller Get Carter, star-studded mystery Sleuth, and his first time working with directorial idol John Huston opposite close friend Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King to his back catalogue.
He was an undeniable star with international appeal, but the man himself singled out none of those aforementioned titles as the most important picture he’d ever been in. Instead, he opted for the first flick that won him acclaim and adulation in both Britain and America, which also landed him on the Academy Awards shortlist for the first time when he netted a ‘Best Actor’ nomination.
“It came out at exactly the right time,” Caine said of Alfie, per The Times. “And it’s not just a romp; Alfie has his dark moments and lonely times. Amazingly, for a British movie, it got a general release in America. At the time, British films were treated as foreign films in the States and given a limited release. General release propelled the movie to a whole new level, and Americans suddenly knew who the hell I was.”
Caine admitted that “Alfie was more important for me than Zulu” in terms of what it meant to his career as a whole. It might have been the latter that gained him the most recognition thus far, but the former elevated him from a talented British actor into a genuine movie star who was equally in-demand on either side of the pond.
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