The one performance in his career Michael Caine was happiest with: “It’s the farthest away from me I have ever played”
One of the many great things about cinema is that it has the potential to create almost every imaginable emotion in an audience, but actors often walk away from a production with feelings of their own. Michael Caine has experienced them all, but only one performance made him the happiest he’d ever been.
As an enduring legend of stage and screen who enjoyed a stellar career spanning seven decades before calling it quits at the age of 90, Caine saw it all, did it all and got the T-shirts. He’s been in classic movies, great ones, mediocre ones, and more than a few awful ones, and he’d be among the first to admit it.
There are films of his he believes were unfairly overlooked, and there are others he’s held his hands up and confessed were atrocious on every conceivable level. He’s been in features that will stand the test of time and many that should never be allowed to escape from the bargain bin, but that’s the name of the game.
No actor goes through their entire career boasting a 100% rate of success, something Caine appreciates. After all, he went through not one but two paycheque phases in his career, with his initial downturn in the 1980s coming on the back of the infamous Jaws: The Revenge, while he alternated his late-career resurgence with nonsense like Vin Diesel’s The Last Witch Hunter and Sherlock Gnomes.
The two-time Academy Award winner may have pointed to his turn in The Quiet American as being the best he’s ever been on-screen, but it didn’t make him the happiest. Instead, that honour fell to a character-driven dramatic comedy written and directed by an Italian auteur. Paolo Sorrentino’s 2015 effort Youth was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and earned Caine a nomination for ‘Best Actor’ at the European Film Awards. It was a far cry from his highest-profile or most well-known work, but for the man himself, it was a special experience the likes of which he’d never enjoyed before.
In the film, Caine plays Fred Ballinger, a retired classical music composer holidaying in the Swiss Alps with his best friend and filmmaker Mick Boyle, played by Harvey Keitel. When an emissary for Queen Elizabeth approaches Fred with the offer of asking him to perform for the monarchy when accepting an upcoming knighthood, he finds himself wrestling with a decision that, on the surface, appears to be a culmination of his entire life’s work.
Existing in a semi-fictionalised universe where Caine plays a fictional character, but there’s also an actor cast as Diego Maradona and a cameo from Paloma Faith as herself, the veteran explained to Short List that even though he was a knight of the realm who’d interacted with the royals on a number of occasions, Fred’s more melancholic and cynical worldview was a complete change of pace.
“I’m particularly proud of Youth, because it’s the farthest away from me that I have ever played,” he said. “I had this whole era when I was a movie star and got the girl. Then I became a movie actor, where I didn’t get the girl, I got the part. But now I look for the most difficult.”
He’d evolved from being a movie star into becoming a respected actor, before segueing into the elder statesman era with grace, dignity, and gravitas. Even though Caine is one of the most recognisable screen presences of his or any other generation, he was enthralled by the opportunity to disappear completely into the part.
“Youth, to me, is one of the best things I ever did because you cannot see me, you only see the person, you cannot see the acting,” he offered. “Youth is probably the performance I’m happiest with. That I ever did.” That’s a lofty accolade, considering the incredible filmography he amassed, but it’s impossible to argue when those are the words coming straight from the horse’s mouth.
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