Michael Caine once explained why he’d hate to be in a western
There aren’t many genres Michael Caine hasn’t appeared in at least once, but by his own admission, at no point during any stage of his incredible career did he even remotely entertain the proposition of being in a western.
Having risen to legendary status through crime thrillers, comedic capers, and powerful dramas before seamlessly segueing into legendary status and continuing to crop up in drama, horror, comic book adaptation, high fantasy, period pieces, and many more besides, there aren’t many actors of Caine’s calibre to have tried their hand at quite so many disparate avenues of cinema.
The results haven’t been uniformly excellent, though, with several of the worst credits in his filmography coming in genre fare, even if positives have still been found along the way. In the case of Jaws: The Revenge he was able to buy himself a fantastic house, while The Swarm surrounded him with a litany of silver screen legends and taught him a thing or two about altering his performances to suit Hollywood.
In his autobiography Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, Caine recalled an early encounter with John Wayne when he’d first relocated himself to the United States to further his prospects as a leading man, with the iconic star telling him that he was going to be a star. However, Wayne’s advice of “talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much” wasn’t strictly taken to heart, and it proved to be the wisest decision considering it would be in the realms of heavily scripted drama that Caine would find the most acclaim.
He probably wouldn’t have had the heart to tell ‘The Duke’ that he was never going to star in his genre of choice, either, although his reasons are as unique as they are hilarious. Speaking to GQ, Caine laid out his thinking: “I’ll never be in a Western because I hate horses, I don’t like wide open spaces, and I’m not very keen on baked beans”.
His equine trepidation is understandable, with Caine bending the truth about his proficiency on horseback prior to landing his breakthrough role in 1964’s Zulu. He told the production he’d had lessons but neglected to mention that he’d signed up for only three, fallen off his steed on the first two, and then failed to show up for the third.
Unless it’s a Hollywood secret carefully shielded from the public, though, then a distaste for baked beans probably isn’t enough of a valid reason to avoid the western altogether, but maybe it was a risk Caine simply wasn’t willing to take under any circumstances.
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