The movie role that answered Michael Caine’s prayers: “I loved my part”
If Michael Caine were to look back to the early days of his career, then he might have thanked his lucky stars that it all seemed to go so swimmingly. After making his breakthrough in a series of acclaimed British movies like Zulu, The Ipcress File and The Italian Job, Caine set about becoming one of the greatest stars of his generation.
Before long, widespread acclaim came to the London-born actor and he achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean with further appearances in the likes of Get Carter, Hannah and Her Sisters, Educating Rita, Dressed to Kill, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and a number of movies with Christopher Nolan.
However, even the greatest actors have a period in their career where things aren’t quite going as they might have wished and for Caine, that seemed to come in the 1990s. His effort in The Muppet Christmas Carol was admired, but a series of dodgy movies, including On Deadly Ground, Blood and Wine and Shadow Run, all seemed to lack the quality that Caine really wanted.
That was until Lasse Hallstrom’s 1999 drama The Cider House Rules, based on John Irving’s novel of the same name, arrived and gave Caine the career boost that he had needed for many years. In fact, in a piece written for The Daily Mail, Caine admitted that his getting a role in the film adaptation of the “great American classic” saw his “prayers answered”.
The fact that Irving had also written the screenplay was “a strong enough pedigree to hook me in,” Caine said, adding, “but the director Lasse Hallstrom was also very talented, and the cast included Charlize Theron, who would go on to win an Oscar for Monster, Tobey Maguire, who would become the hugely successful Spiderman, and my two cohort nurses Kathy Baker and Jane Alexander, both great actresses.”
Indeed, the cast of The Cider House Rules was very impressive indeed and also featured the likes of Paul Rudd, Keiren Culkin and even Erykah Badu. The film tells of Tobey Maguire’s Homer Wells, a young lad who grows up in a World War II-era Maine orphanage directed by Caine’s Dr. Wilbur Larch and then focuses on his journey once he leaves the place of his childhood.
Discussing his character, Caine noted, “I play a doctor who runs an orphanage,” before admitting that her broke and old acting rule with his effort. “The adage about not working with animals or children is always trotted out, but I’ve done both and survived,” the actor explained. “There were about 100 children in The Cider House Rules.”
In the end, the film was released to a huge box office, and it received a brilliant critical reception, too. John Irving won the Academy Award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ for his effort, while Caine himself took home his second ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar following his earlier success on Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters.
“I loved the movie – and I loved my part,” Caine said, just before giving the real reason that he most loves acting in such movies, even away from the success that it brings. “One of the most enjoyable aspects of getting to my age in movies is watching the young stars come up, and Charlize is one of the most talented – and beautiful – of them all.”
So The Cider House Rules was the movie that helped Caine get back on track and introduced him to the next generation of talented actors, most notably Charlize Theron and Tobey Maguire. Indeed, his prayers were answered ten times over.
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