We tried being apart only rarely and it never worked. In the early days of our courtship we were apart for a few days and missed each other terribly. Twenty years later I was so desperate for work that I accepted a role in On Deadly Ground, breaking several of my rules (if you’re going to do a bad movie, at least do it in a good location; if Shakira won’t go, don’t go). Shooting in Alaska, the work froze my brain and the weather froze my arse. I vowed never again.
The very happiest times of my life have been when I’ve been able to get my work and my family into the most complete and satisfying balance. Until very recently, I always said that the happiest movie I ever made—the one I had the most fun making—was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The director was Frank Oz, a kind and gentle man and fantastic comedy director, nothing like his alter ego, Miss Piggy, in The Muppets. He was much more like Grover from Sesame Street, or Yoda from the Star Wars movies, whom he also voices.
I had worked with Frank on The Muppet Christmas Carol and had great trust in him. My co-stars were Steve Martin, who I knew, admired and liked a lot—he is actually quite a shy, reserved person when he’s not putting on a zany on-screen persona, and though he is best-known for his comic acting he is also an incredibly talented writer and musician—and Glenne Headly, who I had never heard of at the time but turned out to be fabulous as a performer and a person.
On set, we barely stopped laughing. The script was genuinely funny—I still think this is the funniest movie I ever made—while avoiding ever being cruel. And, best of all, this was not going to be one of those movies set on the French Riviera but shot in some decaying Eastern European resort (this was before the Berlin Wall came down and Eastern European resorts spruced themselves up). “It’s set in summer in the South of France,” said Frank, “so we shoot in summer in the South of France.” A man after my own heart. The French Riviera is a magical place, full of incredible beaches, unforgettable restaurants and beautiful people—present company excluded.
We rented a villa close to our friends Roger and Luisa Moore and Leslie and Evie Bricusse, and as it was the school holidays a teenage Natasha and two of her friends were able to join us, even working as extras for a couple of days and earning themselves some pocket money. Paradise in paradise.
I didn’t think anything would ever top that but recently I had an even more joyful experience, making Going in Style, a comedy heist movie about three old men who lose their pensions and get so desperate that they decide to rob a bank. Like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Educating Rita, the script was that rare thing, a truly funny comedy. My co-stars were Morgan Freeman, with whom I had made at least half a dozen movies, and Alan Arkin, who, though I had never worked with him before, was a joy to work with and soon felt like an old friend. The director, Zach Braff, was young and brilliant. And the movie was a story I felt excited to tell. Although it was a comedy it was also making some serious points about the struggles of the working class in the United States: three old men lose their pensions, with devastating consequences: they forfeit their homes and cannot access health care. Eventually they hatch a plan to rob the bank that is to blame for the collapse of their lives.
But what really set this movie apart was its location. If you were to ask me today for my perfect job, I would say, “A great script, a great director, great co-stars, shooting somewhere pleasant and warm near the sea, in my grandchildren’s school holidays.” And that was what Going in Style, miraculously, turned out to be. Just as I loved taking Shakira with me, and Natasha when she wasn’t at school, now I love going everywhere I can with my grandchildren. The movie was shot in New York, a city I know and love and, more importantly, where Shakira’s family lives. I found a house on the beach in Sands Point, thirty minutes from the shoot, and installed the entire family there for seven weeks. Shakira’s mother, Saab, had been unwell and had not seen her great-grandchildren for two years. I found her a chair and a cup of tea, and placed her in a spot where she could sit and watch them, whatever they were doing, scampering in and out of the pool and the sea, all day. And every so often one of them would run up and give her a kiss and a cuddle and pad off again. Heaven for her. And coming home to that house after a day’s shooting was heaven for me. Going in Style was the happiest film I ever made.
I regard the family as the greatest organisation ever created by human beings. And, in spite of all the wonderful things that Fate has given me, I regard my own happy family—Shakira, my daughters Dominique and Natasha and my grandchildren Taylor, Allegra and Miles—as my greatest achievement and the best thing that has ever happened to me. Probably as a reaction to the Christmases of my childhood when we received plenty of love but not much else, Christmas is an extravaganza, with presents galore, decorations everywhere, the biggest tree the room will hold, loads of crackers, a huge turkey and a crowd of family and friends. Family celebrations—and we celebrate everything we can think of—are happy, noisy affairs, with small presents, lots of easy food, gallons of ice cream and always, between the main course and dessert, a song-and-dance show from the children. They go off and rehearse while the adults are eating their dinner, then come back with wonderful entertainments for us. Taylor directs, and there is always a musical interlude, with Miles singing, or an improvised dance, to give Allegra time to execute an elaborate costume change for the finale.
I adore the shows for themselves but also because they’re such a clear marker of how the children are growing up and how their personalities are advancing: when they were four and five years old, we in the audience didn’t know what they were doing, but neither did they. And now they’re eight and nine, they’re so sharp and talented and clever, each trying to outperform the others. Holidays together are sheer bliss. Our latest was in Barbados, my favourite holiday destination in the world, where we stayed as guests of my friend Andrew Lloyd Webber—a musical genius and a great host—and his brilliant wife Madeleine. It is a beautiful place, up the hill from the beach for a bit of privacy, and I sat in paradise, writing this book and watching my grandchildren running in and out of the sea where their mother learnt to swim. I also got caught by a member of the paparazzi walking on my crutch (remember the broken ankle) past a poster that said, “Astonishingly enough, I don’t give a shit.” But, quite honestly, I was so happy, I didn’t.
But it doesn’t need to be a holiday or a celebration. I’m overwhelmed every day with gratitude at the happiness my family brings me. They are my legacy, my contribution to society, my joy. I have had a wonderful career and enjoyed it all, but I can honestly say that they mean more to me than all the movies and awards put together. No Hollywood moment can beat the moments I first set eyes on each of my children and grandchildren. Glitz, glamour and stardust are all very well but they cannot give you a warm, sticky-fingered hug on a rainy night. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading off now to kick a football around the garden with the grandchildren.
Epilogue
I HAVE GONE FROM my first role as a butler with one line in a draughty theatre in Horsham—“Dinner is served”—to Batman’s butler in three blockbuster movies; from playing the poker-faced spy in The Ipcress File to self-satire in Austin Powers in Goldmember; from my early years in rep to winding up back there again, as part of Christopher Nolan’s great movie-making repertory family; from an unknown Harold Pinter’s first play, The Room, at the Royal Court in 1960, to his last work, the remade Sleuth; from Alfie to Alfred, and from Harry Palmer to Harry Brown—an old man who started out, like me, in the Elephant and Castle but who, unlike me, never left. As I sit here in my riverside apartment, looking out over the Thames at London being rebuilt all around me, and remember, as a child, sitting in a bomb shelter and listening to it being destroyed, I can’t help reflecting that life has a way of coming full circle.
But it has also, luckily, moved on. I have just spent a happy morning watching the wedding of two people very much in love: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, a divorced, mixed-race, independent-minded, feminist American woman. What would once have be
en unthinkable is now embraced and celebrated. Things have changed for the better in terms of class, too. Looking back, I like to think I played a small part in the social revolution of the 1960s, that I helped working-class people to say, “I can do anything.” My father left school at fourteen, I went to grammar school until I was sixteen and my daughter Natasha went to university: her graduation was one of the proudest days of my life, but for her children, my grandchildren, it will be just a normal thing.
Looking forward, I am a feminist, an anti-racist and an optimist. And my hope is that, just as brilliant writers wrote the parts that made me, new generations of brilliant writers will write the parts for all those who have not yet been given their turn. John Osborne urged us to Look Back in Anger but I prefer to Look Back in Joy and to Look Forward in Hope. If you are young and just starting out, don’t hesitate, don’t be afraid. Jump right in. Go for it. A better time is coming, and you can be part of it.
I have been enormously lucky. My seemingly impossible dreams really have come true. I have done everything I wanted to do, been everywhere I wanted to go and met everyone I have ever wanted to meet. But if I hadn’t been lucky, I would have kept going anyway, doing something I loved and trying to do it as well as I possibly could. In the end if I could give you one bit of advice, it would be that: find what you love, and do it as well as you can. Pursue your dream and, even if you never catch it, you’ll enjoy the chase. The rest comes down to luck, timing and God: even if you don’t believe in him, he believes in you. And when all of that runs out, use the difficulty.
If you’ve got this far, I thank you for joining me on the trip: through the happy times and the misery, the rough and the smooth, the low moments and the amazing highs. I hope you’ve learnt something that helps you, too, along the way. For myself, I’ve had such a great time following my dreams that when my time comes I’d like to come back as me and do it all over again.
John Wayne gave me one last piece of advice and I want to pass it on to you now. It was 1979 and he was fighting cancer in the UCLA Medical Center, in a room two doors down from Shakira, who was recovering from life-threatening peritonitis. Every day when I went in to visit Shakira, I would pop in to see the Duke. I don’t remember what we talked about—old friends and old times, I suppose. I do remember how brave he was as he faced up to his impending death. “It’s got me this time, Mike,” he said to me, with a smile, as though it was a fair fight but the Big C had drawn first. “I won’t be getting out of here.” And then, seeing I was close to tears, “Get the hell out of here and go and have a good time.”
The Duke got it right that time. So go on. Get the hell out of here and go and have a good time. What the hell—go and blow the bloody doors off!
Acknowledgments
THE IDEA FOR THIS book came in part from a master class on movie acting that I recorded for the BBC many years ago, and the book Acting in Film that was based on it. Coming across it again recently, I realised that, while a lot of what I was on about was quite technical, there were lessons in there that could work for everyone. And in the almost thirty years since I recorded that master class—has it really been that long?—this old dog had learnt a few new tricks to pass along too. So my first acknowledgement is to myself thirty years ago for making the master class, and to Maria Aitken, Nathan Silver and everyone else involved in its production.
No endeavour ever succeeds without a tremendous team effort from people who are all expert at what they do, and this book is no exception. I would like to thank Caroline Michel, who got things started, and my skilled and supportive editors, Rowena Webb in London and Paul Whitlatch in New York, who took it from there. My thanks to all of those in the team at Hodder, especially Karen Geary, Juliet Brightmore, Lucy Hale, Catriona Horne and Alasdair Oliver. And thank you to Deborah Crewe: without her help I couldn’t have written the bloody book.
Thank you to Toni Howard, for watching my back, and to legal genius Barry Tyerman, my agent in England Kate Buckley-Sharma, my PA Teresa Selwyn and John Davis.
My biggest debt in this and so many other endeavours is to my wife Shakira, who is my rock, and so much more. Thank you to Shakira, to my wonderful friends and family, and to my grandchildren Taylor, Miles and Allegra, the next generation, who are in my mind and my heart every day.
Also by Michael Caine
What’s It All About?
The Elephant to Hollywood
Image Credits
Part One: London, 1965. Photo by Philippe Le Tellier/Paris Match via Getty Images
Chapter One: With mother at home, 1964. Photo © Mirrorpix
Chapter Two: Dressing room, 1965. Photo by Larry Ellis/Express/Getty Images
Chapter Three: The Ipcress File, 1965. Photo by Universal Studios/Getty Images
Chapter Four: The Compartment, 1965. BBC / Ronald Grant Archive / Mary Evans
Part Two: At home, c.1995. Photo © Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images
Chapter Five: Sleuth, 1973 with Laurence Olivier. Entertainment Pictures / Alamy Stock Photo
Chapter Six: Zulu, tea break, 1963. Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Image
Chapter Seven: The Quiet American, 2002. AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Chapter Eight: Educating Rita, 1983 with Julie Walters. Photo by Manchester Daily Express/SSPL/Getty Images
Chapter Nine: Alfie, 1966 with Lewis Gilbert. Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
Chapter Ten: On set of Dressed to Kill, 1980. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Part Three: Cannes, 2015. Photo by Nicolas Guerin/Contour by Getty Images
Chapter Eleven: Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, The Cider Houes Rules, Academy Awards 2000. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Chapter Twelve: Batman Begins, 2005. AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Chapter Thirteen: Alfie, 1966 with Jane Asher. Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
Chapter Fourteen: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, 1988 with Steve Martin. Photo © Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images
Chapter Fifteen: Youth, 2015, photo call in Cannes with Rachel Weisz. Splash News / Alamy Stock Photo
Chapter Sixteen: With Natasha, Shakira and Niki. REUTERS/Fred Prouser
Chapter Sixteen (end): With grandchildren, 2018. Photo © Andrew Fairbrother
Epilogue (end): The Italian Job, 1969 with Michael Standing. Photo by Paramount/Getty Images
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Blowing the Bloody Doors Off Page 21