The one icon Michael Caine was left completely stunned by: “I froze, tongue-tied”
The jump from British cinema to Hollywood in the 1960s took a little getting used to for Michael Caine, with the actor suddenly finding himself surrounded by the very people he’d watched from afar and looked to as inspirations, influences, and idols.
The working-class lad from Rotherhithe was now rubbing shoulders with the biggest stars Tinseltown had to offer, and while there were understandable pinch-me moments when he was chatting to the likes of John Wayne and Cary Grant, some of those icons ended up becoming close friends.
It was the first Academy Award nomination of his career for playing the lead role in Alfie that served as the catalyst for Caine to try his luck across the pond, with the star being shortlisted for ‘Best Actor – Comedy or Musical’ for his efforts when breezy heist caper Gambit marked his first time playing a major role in an American production.
He never looked back after that, but still, befriending one of the most famous faces on the planet wouldn’t have been on his bingo card. Not only were they a certified superstar of the silver screen, but they were also one of the bestselling musical artists in history and a person whose songs Caine had grown up listening to.
To illustrate just how close they were, Caine had never been to Las Vegas before he met Frank Sinatra, he’d never flown on a private plane until he travelled the country on Sinatra’s jet, and ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ had never let an actor – or a celebrity of any kind – date his daughter until Caine began seeing Nancy.
“I adored Frank,” the two-time Oscar winner told GQ. “He was such a generous man. He thought I was very funny. Well, he thought my accent was funny. And he always had this thing that I made too many movies. We’d meet, and he’d go, ‘Hey Mikey, how ya doing? How many movies you make today?'”
During one of their many trips to Vegas, when Caine was going out with Sinatra’s daughter, he was hit with a sudden realisation. Here he was, a cockney bloke from London, sharing an entire plane with a legend he’d known of since his earliest days, one he was now in the position to call a friend.
“All the girls had gone together and it was just me and Frank on this plane together. And all of a sudden, I froze, tongue-tied,” he confessed. “Sinatra said, ‘Mikey, what’s up? You scared of flying?’. And I had to admit to him it had suddenly hit me; I was sitting on a private plane with Frank Sinatra. I’d known him all my life in some way, and here I was, talking to him. ‘Frank’, I said. ‘I’m overwhelmed.'”
Even though it was far from being their first meeting, realising that he’d somehow conspired to become a close friend of Sinatra was a mind-blowing moment that made Caine completely lose all sense of himself, so much so he needed a moment to recover.
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