The “mortifying” moment Michael Caine was told he’d never act in movies again: “Well, I did”
It feels so good to prove people wrong. When people doubt our abilities, it can feel like a crushing weight has been thrown against us, crushing all sense of confidence in ourselves. So when that moment comes when you get to prove that you have in fact got what it takes to succeed, it’s worth celebrating.
It’s reassuring to know that even actors as successful as Michael Caine have faced doubts from those who thought they’d fall and fail. Clearly you can never be too sure who you’re questioning, because they might just become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood with a few Oscars to their name. Then you’re left looking like a right fool.
Caine was so desperate to be a star, and during his stint of working in a factory, he discovered a way to get a step closer to his ambition when a colleague suggested he look for jobs in a specific newspaper. It might’ve seemed far-fetched to imagine himself becoming a Hollywood star when he was just a young man from south London with no formal acting training, but he beat the odds as he climbed his way up the ladder from a modest local theatre job he found advertised on the back page of a paper to Oscar-winning fame.
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw Caine appear in many small, uncredited roles in movies he hoped would advance his career. It was a dream he was evidently dedicated to, because it took 14 years for Caine to go from his first on-screen role to his first major part. 1964’s Zulu was a turning point for the actor, who proved that he could be more than just a background character – he had what it took to become a star.
Only a few years earlier, however, Caine had been told that he’d never be a proper actor. In fact, he was told he’d never act again, full stop. If I was Caine, I probably would’ve cried myself to sleep that night, but the actor wasn’t going to give up that easily, no matter how humiliated he felt.
In his memoir Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, Caine explained his small role in the film. “I had to hold up the traffic, direct the cars one way and the trucks the other, then say my one line. It was a complicated piece of business that would surely have floored me in my early movie-acting days, but by now I was more experienced and finally I nailed it.”
You’d think that would be simple enough, but Caine ballsed it up quite terrifically. “Cameras rolled, cars and trucks rolled and my policeman’s helmet rolled down over my eyes and apparently over my brain too. I couldn’t see the cars and trucks, and I couldn’t remember my line. The lesson is not about hats. (Or not only about hats. Note to all: don’t let hats distract you from your goals.) It is about the value of experience, even (or especially) the most humiliating experience. The Day the Earth Caught Fire was mortifying.”
Caine was then met with a sentence he’d never wanted to hear. “The director actually said to me words that I thought were just a cliché: ‘You’ll never work in this industry again.’ Well, I did work in movies again a few times after that, but I never again allowed a hat to distract me.”
This was a big lesson for Caine, and he certainly did work in the movies again. He actually got his first ‘Best Actor’ nomination from the Academy Awards just five years later for Alfie. I bet Guest regretted his comments when he saw Caine’s name up there alongside Richard Burton and Steve McQueen.
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