The role Michael Caine “really hated” playing: “You must never do it again”
As you’d expect from an actor who made in excess of 120 movies across more than 70 years, Michael Caine has played a wide range of characters, including one that became such a horrendous experience that he swore he’d never portray anyone like them ever again.
One of the most frequent, and sometimes unfair, accusations levelled at Caine throughout his career was that he always played Michael Caine. While that’s not completely false, since anyone would recognise that accent from a mile away, he refused to let himself be pigeonholed playing cockney wideboys.
He did play a few of them, of course, but whether it was drama, thrillers, awful Steven Seagal vehicles, fantasy epics, the occasional horror, a few period pieces, a smattering of literary adaptations, and even voice-only performances, you can’t say the man didn’t have range, even if he could never quite shake the baggage of the innate Michael Caine-ness he carried with him everywhere he went.
The two-time Academy Award winner even played a serial killer who committed their crimes under the guise of the opposite sex in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill. Ironically, this being a De Palma flick, there were numerous homages made to Alfred Hitchcock, and Caine had turned down the chance to work with the ‘Master of Suspense’ because of the graphic nature of Frenzy, only to happily portray a killer in this one.
He earned the most undeserved awards season recognition of his career when he was nominated for ‘Worst Actor’ at the Razzies for his turn as Robert Elliott, and he’d suffered for his art long before being shortlisted as one of the 1980s’ most dismal leading men, explaining why he detested shooting the picture to The Guardian.
“I hated it, I really hated it,” he admitted. “And not for some butch or macho reason. I had to shave my legs because all the hairs came through the tights. Putting tights on every morning, argh! And I found it very difficult to walk in high heels. Also, it depends how you look. I looked like Linda Tripp. If you see that film, I looked like Linda Tripp.”
Despite the Razzies also bestowing De Palma and Nancy Allen with ‘Worst Director’ and ‘Worst Actress’ nods, respectively, Dressed to Kill gained strong reviews from critics and recouped its budget almost five times over at the box office, so it was hardly a failure. And yet, Caine’s representatives were left aghast.
“My agent said to me, when she saw the film, ‘Michael, I know you had to be in drag for this movie, but you must never do it again, because you look like shit,'” he revealed. “Anyway, I didn’t like it, and I haven’t done it again, and I wouldn’t do it.'” Fair enough, if Caine doesn’t want to shave his legs and wear high heels again, then nobody’s going to force him.
He was true to his word, and the remaining 43 years of Caine’s career passed without him ever donning drag again, even if he proved himself capable of delivering a powerhouse performance when doing so.
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