The Elephant to Hollywood

by Michael Caine

  As if learning a chant that could lower my blood pressure wasn’t impressive enough, the following evening was an even more memorable experience. The former Maharaja of Jaipur had invited us to dinner. When we arrived at the palace, we were dropped at the start of the drive up to the front door and got out of the car to find the entire drive lined with a band mounted on elephants and camels decorated with exotic livery and playing the most beautiful music. As we walked through the ancient arch at the end of the drive, we were showered with rose petals by young girls who were seated on the top. It felt as if we were walking through some ancient fable. The dinner was delicious and afterwards we were treated to an extraordinary display of folk dancing in which dancers from all over Rajasthan entertained us – culminating in a finale by a group of tiny women from the mountains who had never before been outside their distant villages. Like most things about India it managed to be both breathtaking and mesmerising.

  Although so much of our time was spent being entertained by the great and the good, I also wanted to get a sense of ordinary lives and the way they were changing in the world’s greatest secular democracy. Of course much remains the same. I had been struck by the decorated cart, a bit like a wheelbarrow, I had seen in one of the palaces I had visited, which was, so the tour guide told me, for the late Maharani to be wheeled about the house in. ‘Was she disabled?’ I asked. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘She wore so much jewellery she couldn’t stand up.’ I thought of this the following day when I paid three little girls of five or six to see me safely across a road through what was, to a westerner, simply terrifying traffic. Technological advancement is rushing through India, but it will be a long time coming to most of its population – one wealthy woman I met told me that her electrician didn’t have electricity and her plumber didn’t have plumbing. In the meantime ordinary Indians muddle through with the enterprise and ingenuity that is on display everywhere. As one person I met there said, ‘India is living proof that chaos works.’ It certainly did for me.

  New exotic places are exciting to visit but, as I’ve said before, I’m a home-lover at heart. My family, my friends, my house and my garden are the most important things in life as far as I’m concerned and I’m never happier than when I’m entertaining those I love best at home. As you may have guessed, I love to cook – but it was not always like that. I had some very definite dislikes in certain areas when I was younger and it has taken me a long time to get over them.

  The first aversion I had to deal with was the habit of putting olive oil on your food. I first came across it on location in Portugal for A Hill in Korea and I thought it was just plain disgusting. My mother always used it for cleaning the wax out of our ears and that, I believed was its sole purpose. Why on earth would you want to put it on your food and eat it? Another thing was blue cheese. In the army I slept in a room with twenty guys and we all had almost permanent athlete’s foot. Because we were all infantrymen we walked about a lot and the cure for athlete’s foot was a blue paint – so we all walked around with blue feet. Whenever I used to see or smell blue cheese, I was taken right back to the army and I didn’t want to be reminded of it! In my early days, that mild cream cheese known as ‘La Vache qui rit’ which is packaged in those little silver triangles, was as far as I’d go in the continental cheese line. My third aversion also stemmed from my days in the army but had its origins in a much more frightening encounter than the blue cheese. The sudden smell of garlic on the night air implied that Chinese soldiers were close by and for years the smell made me feel sick. I’m well over this one, too – although I still don’t like snails in garlic. And then there was the word ‘California’. It’s now one of my favourite places in the world, but when I was a little boy any mention of ‘California’ struck terror in my heart . . . My mother used to dose me up with California Syrup of Figs and I would then have to spend a very unpleasant day dashing down the three flights of stairs from our flat out to the toilet in the back yard . . .

  Speaking of snails, I have a big problem with them in my garden and I think the French are to blame. I know you might think that the French eat millions of snails each year so how could they be exacerbating my snail problem? It’s because the French eat thrushes, and thrushes eat snails. Now, the French eat a lot of things that I wouldn’t – frogs’ legs, for example – but the frog question does not affect my garden, and the lack of thrushes does. There are fewer and fewer thrushes in my garden each year and more and more snails, so if you want to eat snails, please do so with my blessing – I’m even giving you a very good recipe to encourage you – but please tell your French friends to leave the thrushes alone!

  Snails in garlic butter

  You can eat common or garden snails, and very good they are too, as Gordon Ramsay demonstrated on The F Word. You do need to know what you’re doing when it comes to preparation, though. Collect your snails (allow about eight large ones per person) and rinse them thoroughly under running water. Now you need to put them on a 48-hour fasting programme so they shed their toxins. Keep them in a large jar with some holes for breathing, in the lid, or a small cage from which they cannot escape. At the end of the process, rinse them again. Just make sure you don’t cook a dead snail – they should retract into their shells when poked. There’s no need to salt them or remove any part of their bodies. You can place their jar in the fridge for 24 hours before you cook them. The cold will send them to sleep. Boil the snails vigorously for three minutes, then drain and rinse in cold water with a splash of vinegar. Repeat this rinsing twice more. Then simmer the snails in water with some herbs (a bay leaf and some fresh thyme is perfect) for thirty minutes, drain and remove the snails gently from their shells using a pair of tweezers. If you are planning to use the shells, as per the classic recipe, you need to boil them in a large pan of water with two tablespoons of baking soda for an hour and then allow to dry thoroughly.

  8 large snails per person, prepared according to the method above

  7g butter

  1 tablespoon finely chopped onion

  2 large cloves of garlic, minced

  2 tablespoons chopped parsley

  A squeeze of lemon juice

  Pepper and salt

  Mash the garlic, butter, onion, parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper together. Press one snail into each clean, dry shell. Fill all the shells with the garlic butter, pressing it down well around the snail. Arrange the shells in a baking dish or special snail dish so they don’t fall over, and bake in a pre-heated oven (220 degrees C, or gas mark 7) for ten minutes.

  Serve with hot crusty bread.

  Baked potatoes

  Another family favourite of ours is baked potatoes in their skins. It’s easy to do, nutritious and if you follow this recipe from my daughter Natasha, they are delicious. Use one large or two smaller potatoes per person.

  Wash the potatoes and then dry them thoroughly. Prick all over with a fork and smear them with olive oil and sea salt. Place them in the microwave for ten minutes. Place them in a pre-heated oven (220 degrees C, or gas mark 7) for an hour.

  My roast potatoes

  Michael Winner has always been very complimentary about my roast potatoes – and, as everyone knows, he has exacting standards in the culinary department. You can use one of two types of potatoes: if you want the typical English roast potato, go for Maris Piper. If you want something a bit more delicate and classy, although it’s slightly more tricky, use Mayan Gold. Either way, you soak a bunch of rosemary and a couple of cloves of garlic in a baking tin of olive oil. While you are doing that, boil the potatoes – ten minutes for the Maris Pipers, but only five minutes for the Mayan Golds, or you will have mash. Strain and allow to dry. Dry the saucepan thoroughly and then tip the potatoes back in, and give them a violent shake so that the surface is broken up and they have a fluffy appearance. Take the rosemary and garlic out of the oil and replace with the potatoes, making sure they are well coated. The oil is cold, not pre-heated, and although I can hear chefs screaming, if you do i
t this way, the oil will sink in. Finally, sprinkle the whole lot with celery salt and place in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees C, gas mark 4, for one and a half hours for the Maris Pipers and one hour for the Mayan Golds. If you do this, you will have the most amazing treat to go with your roast Sunday lunch . . .

  Bruschetta

  For Saturday lunch, we often eat bruschetta, along with melanzane parmigiana. Shakira cooks the melanzane – she loves aubergine and I have a whole greenhouse full of it. Shakira is a great Italian cook and learnt it all from a lady from Bologna who used to cook for us, but had to retire because of arthritic hands. I’m in charge of the bruschetta – and here’s my favourite recipe, which I got from a restaurant in New York.

  Chop a bowl of cherry tomatoes into small pieces and sprinkle with black pepper, salt and celery salt. Mix in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and then a large sprig of chopped basil.

  Toast slices of slightly stale ciabatta bread. Rub with garlic and drizzle with olive oil. Pile the tomatoes on top and enjoy yourself!

  And while we’re about it, here are some general tips I’ve picked up along the way:

  All meat must be room temperature before cooking except hamburger, which holds better if it is slightly cold.

  If you want a quick roast chicken, boil it for half an hour first.

  For the best toast, run the toaster empty first and then do it again with your bread. (Not very ecologically sound, I know, but it really works.)

  If you want very hot English mustard, mix Colman’s mustard powder with milk instead of water.

  Before you roast a leg of lamb, rub it with a mixture of olive oil and mint, rosemary and garlic all chopped up together with salt and pepper, and then cover with grated Parmesan cheese.

  Sardines, beetroots and tomatoes are all supposed to have anti-ageing properties. I’ve been eating them all my life and I’m still going . . .

  If you want a soft-boiled egg and you boil it ten seconds over two minutes it will be as hard as a rock. (And I’ve always found that if you want a hard-boiled egg, you can often boil it for ten minutes and it will still remain mysteriously soft . . .)

  And my personal favourite – they say that one glass of red wine a day is good for you, so I always drink two on the principle that it must be twice as good for me.

  Epilogue

  So now I’m in the fortunate and luxurious position of only working when I want to. I don’t like having to get up early in the morning or spending a long time learning lines, so these days I only work with offers that I really can’t refuse. It’s very different from the way I used to be. From the age of twenty to the age of twenty-nine, I was obsessed with becoming an actor – and when I finally got to Hollywood, I could never quite believe that I had made it and so I kept on working for fear it would all disappear on me.

  These days, I don’t think like that at all. I don’t see myself as a Hollywood movie star – in fact I don’t see myself as anything in particular. I’m aware that I have this image in the media and I have to confess that I quite like it, but of course I’m not allowed to take myself too seriously. I once tried it on Shakira. ‘I’m an icon,’ I said. ‘It says so in the paper.’ ‘You may be an icon,’ she said, ‘but you’d better take the rubbish out!’

  Of course we still go back to Hollywood – it’s an incredibly important part of our lives and many of our friends still live there. But the links are loosening. I had thought it was all over in 1992, but it turned out that it wasn’t. Now, I think it probably is.

  The first hint of this came during a visit to LA last year when we went to a restaurant on Little Santa Monica called Dolce Vita. It was Frank Sinatra’s favourite restaurant and as we walked in, I remembered the night long ago when he had first brought us there. As Shakira and I walked to our table, which was right across the room, the faces of friends of ours kept appearing out of the darkness to say hello. When we finally reached the table and sat down, I asked Shakira, ‘Did you notice anything special about the people who have just greeted us?’ ‘Well,’ she said, a bit puzzled, ‘they are all friends of ours . . .’ ‘I know that,’ I said, ‘but they were all women, and they are all widows.’ I could see at once that she understood: Barbara Sinatra, the widow of Frank, Veronique Peck, the widow of Gregory and Barbara Davis, the widow of our billionaire friend, Marvin.

  This time, as soon as we arrived, Shakira and I went for a drive through Beverly Hills, for old time’s sake. As we drove around we pointed out to each other the houses of people we had known: Danny Kaye, Jimmy Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire among others. When we finally got back to the hotel, I had another question for her. ‘Did you notice anything about those houses we were looking at today?’ I asked. This time Shakira had the answer straight away. ‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘The people we knew who lived in them are all dead.’ Some sort of message was beginning to sink in for us.

  The following day, while Shakira had lunch with girlfriends, I had lunch with my Hollywood press agent Jerry Pam at The Grill just off Rodeo Drive, one of my favourite haunts for over forty years. As we sat down, Jerry gave me the news I had been half expecting for some time: he was retiring and leaving Hollywood for good. He is a sprightly eighty-three, so this wasn’t exactly a shock, but given our experiences of the last few days, it was another sign that it was probably time finally to say goodbye to the place I loved so much. After lunch, Jerry and I got to the corner of Rodeo Drive, shook hands, said goodbye – and as I watched him disappear into the groups of Japanese tourists on his way to find his car, I knew it was over.

  I didn’t hesitate. I went straight into Ermenegildo Zegna and bought myself a shirt. I always do that when I’m a bit depressed. Carrier bag in hand, I wandered back up Rodeo Drive as the memories flooded back. The history of my Hollywood was all around me. I passed the Daisy on my right, once the best discotheque in Beverly Hills, now a clothes shop. The jewellers’ on the corner had once been the home of Barbra Streisand’s hairdresser, Jon Peters, who became the boss of Columbia Pictures. On my left was the site of the Luau, the place to see and be seen by everyone who was anyone in Hollywood. It is now a shopping mall . . .

  But by the time I’d got back to the hotel, I’d cheered up. So Hollywood was finally over after forty years? It had been great, but, I thought, that’s the past. I’m going home to my future, to my friends, my family, my home and garden – maybe to another film, if something interesting comes along, but in any case, to everything that really matters – and above all, to the newest and most exciting development in my life – my three grandchildren.

  On 15 October 2008, our lives changed forever. I had been delighted by the news of Natasha’s pregnancy, and was looking forward to the baby’s arrival, but I had no idea of the depth of the love I would feel for my first grandchild. Natasha and her husband Michael named their son Taylor and gave him the middle names of Michael and Caine. ‘You never had a son, Dad,’ Natasha said, ‘and now you have one.’ It was a unique gift. What’s more, although both Natasha and Michael have black hair and brown eyes, Taylor has blond hair and blue eyes and people say he looks just like me. I think he is far, far better looking than I ever was and I have decided that I want to live for another fifty years so I can watch him grow up and grow old – as you can tell, I am completely besotted.

  Just as Shakira and I were getting used to Taylor and the joy he brought to us, Natasha announced that she was pregnant again. September 2009 was the big month and we were very excited – only to have another surprise when she announced that she was having twins! We went into overdrive: a new bedroom was added, swings and slides adorned the lawn and the living room was turned into a nursery. Our house was a big place for just two people, but it is perfect for visits from our new family – some sixth sense must have been operating when we planned it all!

  The twins, Miles and Allegra, were born on 23 September, which means for two weeks each year they and Taylor are the same age. They don’t look anything like each other: Miles
is dark, with brown eyes, and Allegra is blonde with blue eyes. I remember Scarlett Johannsson introducing me to her twin, Hunter, and being astonished to find that while she is five foot four, with blue eyes and blonde hair, Hunter is six foot three and dark. Maybe our twins will be just the same . . .

  The twins, though growing fast, are still babies; Taylor is rapidly becoming a little boy and I love having him just pottering around the room when I’m writing. He’s very good at noticing when I’m getting writer’s fatigue – which is about every twenty minutes – and he comes over to give me a rest by climbing on to my lap and switching on Mickey Mouse on my computer. It means so much to me to have these precious grandchildren who suddenly appeared in my seventy-fifth year over a period of just over eleven months, an unexpected late joy and one that I could never have imagined would mean so much. They are in my thoughts constantly. I’m planning ahead to Christmas already – the twins were too young to appreciate it last year, although I thought Taylor would enjoy all the lights and the decorations and pulled out all the stops. He loved it, it was worth everything just to see the look on his face when he came in to the room and saw the tree ablaze with lights and piled with presents. And I’m planning to move on from Miami again to avoid that nine-hour flight (not the best with three small children) and the wonderful, but scary, balcony seven storeys up . . .

  So life moves on, and it is now a Monday morning at my home in Surrey as I sit writing this final chapter. Last weekend, the 14th of March, was my seventy-seventh birthday and it was such a special one. I had three grandchildren at my birthday for the first time in my life. It was a beautiful sunny day and we picked the first daffodils of spring and that, for me, is perfection.