Michael Caine names the worst character he ever played: “I’ve never disliked anybody so much”
The majority of actors will play at least one morally bankrupt or reprehensible character during their career, but there are some stars who are hard to buy as villains. Michael Caine is definitely one of them, which is exactly why he wanted to try and upend expectations to a degree that disgusted him.
He’s broken bad many times and done so successfully, with vicious enforcer Jack Carter in Get Carter and Robert Elliott in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill among them. Still, nobody’s going to look at his work in Steven Seagal’s interminable On Deadly Ground as a nefarious CEO and say Caine’s cut out for being a prick.
The two-time Academy Award winner has always come across as a polite, well-mannered, and altogether affable gentleman both onscreen and off, making it hard to buy him as a sneering piece of shit. However, he did a tremendous job of showing off his inner weasel when he went completely against type in Norman Jewison’s The Statement.
The film itself may not have been up to much, but Caine was imperious as Pierre Brossard, a former soldier who’d ordered the death of seven French Jews during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Having escaped trial or punishment for his crimes, he adopted a new identity and spent the next 40 years evading capture by calling in favours from allies and co-conspirators.
When he discovers there’s a plot to assassinate him in revenge for the atrocities committed decades previously, Brossard reveals himself to be a spineless coward who’d turn on anyone in the name of self-preservation. It was a complex and challenging part to play, and one Caine couldn’t wait to be rid of.
“Oh, I’m the worst guy I’ve ever played,” he told Erika Hernandez of The Statement. “I’ve never disliked anybody so much as I dislike Brossard. And that’s the reason I did it, because I keep testing myself to see what I can do to make it harder for myself because I’ve been acting for a long time.”
Following it up with an admission that’s become a key part of his legacy, Caine confessed that he could “play a Cockney gangster or a womaniser in my sleep or standing on my head,” which the history books show to be very true. To keep things fresh, he plumped for a Nazi hiding out in France who ends up growing increasingly desperate to save their own skin, which he called “about as far away from me as I can possibly get without actually going to Mars or something”.
The biggest shame is that it didn’t come in a better movie, with the rest of The Statement failing to match up to Caine’s phenomenal showcase. It’s become one of the most unheralded and overlooked performances of his career by default, which is unfortunate because it’s comfortably among the upper tier, something that isn’t easy to achieve given the legendary competition.
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