The roles Michael Caine cherishes the most: “Completely ignored, I have no idea why”
The way the movie business tends to work is that actors will talk up their latest project as the greatest thing they’ve ever been a part of, and once the dust settles and it’s time for honesty, they tell it like it is. Some stars refuse to say a bad word about any of their films, but Michael Caine has never been one of them.
The legend has been in more than a few shitty pictures, and he knows it. He missed out on the crowning achievement of his career when he couldn’t collect his first Academy Award in person for Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters because he was preoccupied with Jaws: The Revenge, a dismal creature feature that gave rise to one of his greatest-ever quotes.
Caine took it as an omen when the bees used in The Swarm started shitting on him during production, but the chance to work with so many iconic performers was too good to turn down. He only reprised the role of Harry Palmer in a pair of shoddy made-for-TV sequels because the decent parts had tried up, and it made him so miserable he knew he had to either quit for good or turn a corner.
Honesty and openness have always been two of Caine’s characteristics, whether he’s confessing that shooting a Steven Seagal dud made him reevaluate his priorities or pointing to the myriad of critical and commercial disasters he’s been unfortunate enough to be a part of.
Of course, the good vastly outweighs the bad, and Caine has more than enough successes to compensate for the misfires. With over 100 credits to his name before retiring at the age of 90 in 2023, trying to select a handful that he holds dearest than the rest sounds like a tall order. However, the two-time Oscar winner knew exactly what made the cut.
“The Man Who Would Be King, Alfie, and Youth, with Paolo Sorrentino,” he told Variety when asked to name his most cherished roles before voicing his frustrations at how he was snubbed for his performance in the latter. “I won the German Academy award for that, but it was completely ignored in the UK and America. Completely ignored. I have no idea why.”
Understandably, working with his favourite director and one of his closest friends is the reason why The Man Who Would Be King is such a dear memory. Caine said, “There’s no one like John Huston, and obviously, there’s no one like Sean. We were friends forever.”
Seeing as he’d already gone on record calling Alfie the most cherished movie of his career, it was inevitable that his work in it – which gained him his first Oscar nomination and turned him into an international star – rounded out Caine’s personal top three.
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