Michael Caine's Christmas Party

 Many years ago, about 40 years ago, in fact, Michael Caine did me a huge favour. I was chairman of a charity - the National Playing Fields Association - and I needed to raise £ 100,000 for the cause. Michael Caine helped me do it by letting me publish a book called “Not a lot of people know that” featuring some of the unlikely nuggets of information he has been collecting over the years. The book became a Number One best-seller - all thanks to him.

I have seen the great man now and then over the years because we had and have a few mutual friends - one was the great Sir Roger Moore, the other is the wonderful lyricist and composer, Leslie Bricusse. Twenty years ago, in the tun-up to Christmas and to promote his latest film, I went to interview Sir Michael - and found him in very happy form. Rumour today is he’s made his last film and he is planning to retire - so today in 2021 seems a day for sharing that interview from 2001 with you. Michael Caine is a remarkable man - and a unique film star. I hope this brief encounter gives you a flavour of him.

Christmas is coming and Sir Michael Caine is throwing a party - in his head and in my presence.  The one-time Maurice Micklewhite (born 1933, Billingsgate fish market porter’s son), turned Michael Scott (1950s stage actor), turned Michael Caine (Oscar-winning film star), is 68 and ready to count his blessings.  He wants to raise a seasonal glass with some of the geezers who’ve helped him down the years:  ‘Say thank you, cheers and Merry Christmas.’ 

I have met Caine off and on over a quarter of a century and seen him in assorted moods: sometimes curmudgeonly, occasionally belligerent, mostly even-tempered, if a little caustic at the edges.   But I have never known him as mellow as this.  This is extraordinary.  This is Scrooge on Christmas morning.  The man is bubbling over with the milk of human kindness.  It seems the joke is spot on.  When the Queen knighted him earlier this year, she managed to knock the chip off his shoulder.

 In the not-so-distant past, particularly when he lived in Los Angeles, Caine made it clear he felt unappreciated back home and was suffering from both the ‘poor-me’s’ and chronic knight starvation.   He was ready then to say some quite ungenerous things about the United Kingdom.  Not any more.  ‘I can afford to live in the best place in the world, Gyles – and I do.  I live here.  England’s great.  I have a flat in Chelsea and a house in Surrey and that’s my lot.  Sure, the National Health Service and the transport system are in the toilet, but what else is new?’ 

I cannot persuade him to knock the government, the weather, or the state of the British film industry.   He won’t stop smiling.  He is in party mood.  ‘Let’s rock and roll’, he says in a voice I don’t need to describe.  You know exactly how he sounds: he sounds exactly like Michael Caine.   What is going to serve his guests?

 ‘Absolut vodka and cranberry juice.  Then we’d move on to some great clarets and Le Montrachet.’   He says ‘Le Montrachet’ with care.  Caine knows his wine, but his heavy boozing days are over.  ‘Ten years ago I gave up drinking during the day and two and half years ago I gave up smoking cigars.  I loved them, but I thought, “You’ve had your share.  Leave some for someone else.”’   He is looking slim, supple, fit. He is the same age as Joan Collins. Clearly, 68 is the new 50.   Does he have a personal trainer?  ‘No. I did National Service.  I know what to do.  And I walk everywhere – two to four miles a day, without fail.  I lived in LA where they are very aware of their health.  They do so much drugs, they have to be.’   He laughs.  It is a sustained, contented gurgle.  He laughs at all his own jokes.  I am with a happy man.

What food is he going to serve?  ‘I think I would be naff enough to serve caviar,’ he says, grinning endearingly.

Who is first through the door?

 ‘Ah.’  He leans forward.  We’re getting down to business now.  ‘Mr Watson, my English teacher at Wilson’s Grammar School in Peckham.  He’d be 110 by now.  All the other masters thought I was useless.  He didn’t.  He guided me right through English literature.  I was a twelve year-old Cockney reading Kipling and Thomas Hardy.   Books were important then for kids because there was no television, no computers – so you read and you wound up with this vivid imagination.  Mr Watson gave me the works.  I owe him everything.’

 I look at Michael Caine and he looks at me.  We are both smiling and there are tears in our eyes.  This, I suppose, is part of his stock-in trade, one of the reasons he has sustained a career at the top across four decades: he can create a mood, an atmosphere that rings true, instantly.

‘Who is next?’ I ask. 

‘Two more dead ones,’ he says.  ‘Richard Burton and Stanley Baker.  They were both role-models for me.’  

Caine made his first film in 1956.    He moved to the front-rank twelve pictures later, in 1963, with Zulu, starring Stanley Baker.   ‘In my day, everyone thought you had to be posh to be an actor.  If you were working class, there weren’t British actors you could identify with.  The British stars were all a bit fey.  Stanley broke the mould.  He was the first tough British actor who could compete with American actors for butchness.

‘It was watching Richard Burton in the 1950s that made me realise what I needed was a voice.  I saw him in Hamlet at the Old Vic.  It was the quickest Hamlet you ever saw, because in those days the pubs shut at half-past ten.  Burton was out of Elsinore and at the bar by 10.20.   He was from a working-class background, but his voice was beautiful.  He made me realise how ugly mine was.  There was never a problem with my grammar, thanks to Mr Watson, but my voice was tight, like a real Cockney’s, up in my throat.  I realised I had to place my voice and I consciously did that, with a bit of help from my first wife.  She did this trick with her hand at my throat.  She actually got my voice to come down to where it is now.  Burton was the inspiration, but she was the one who gave me the Michael Caine voice.   Here people think it’s a kind of Cockney, but in the States they think it’s some weird American accent.  They’ve all got someone in the attic from Czechoslovakia who talks like that.’

Caine speaks generously of both his wives.  The first, actress Patricia Haines, mother of his elder daughter, Niki, came in and out of his life when he was still in his early twenties.  He has been with his present wife, Shakira Baksh (a one-time Miss Guyana), mother of his other daughter, Natasha, since 1972.

‘My first wife died twenty-five years ago of lung cancer.  She was a wonderful person.  We broke up, but it was nothing to do with her.  It was me.  I couldn’t cut it.   I swore I’d never get married again and for me to be married to the same woman for thirty years is just incredible.’

Why does he think his marriage has lasted so well?

‘Because my wife comes with me on location.’  He laughs.  ‘Location is dangerous.  It’s a long way from home and if you’re on your own . . .’  He leans forward.  ‘Seriously, I’ll tell you why my marriage works.  My wife is an honest partner, and she’s everything you could want – a secretary, a wife, a lover, a mother.  Behind the scenes she runs the show.’

 ‘How have you managed to avoid the perils of drink and womanising?’

 ‘I did a lot of it when I was young and got it out of my system.’    He gives me a Jack-the-lad grin and then returns to the business in hand.  ‘Now, three more dead ones for the party list, three of the greats: Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Noel Coward.

‘I learnt something amazing from Larry.’  They appeared together in Sleuth, 1972.  ‘He had an extraordinary dynamic.  He could summon up energy from nowhere.  The first time he did it, he blew me apart.  It was like being in the eye of a hurricane.  I can do that now.  He showed me it was possible.

 ‘John Gielgud was a revelation.’  The Whistle Blower, 1986.  ‘This great Shakespearean turned out to be a brilliant film actor, absolutely natural.   He should have been a camp old theatrical thing, but he wasn’t at all.  Noel (The Italian Job, 1969) was a different kettle of fish.  He simply brought the Coward persona to the screen.  He had a presence, and you can’t fake it.  We became great friends.  The most British thing I ever did was go to the Savoy Grill and have dinner with Noel.  He was so funny.  He used to take the piss out of everybody.’

Is he planning to have any of his contemporaries at the party?

‘Oh, yes.  The guys in the current film, (Last Orders, the screen adaptation of Graham Swift’s Booker Prize-winning novel, opening in London on 11 January): Tom Courtenay, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Helen Mirren, David Hemmings.

The secret of film acting is relaxation.  And here you had five or six of us, all relaxed, knowing that no one was going to shaft us or play any tricks. It was great.

‘The one I didn’t really know was David Hemmings.  I was tremendously impressed with him – not on the set, but when I saw the picture.  I thought, “Jesus, he’s good.”  You see, if it’s great on the screen you can’t see anything on the set.

Caine takes pride in his craft.  ‘I did a lot of theatre in the ‘fifties,’ he tells me, ‘and got good reviews, but I don’t want to do any stage-acting now.  I don’t see any point in it.  When I started there used to be the idea that theatre was everything and you did a film to buy a car or a new flat.  That’s changed.  I was the first of a generation to become professional film actors.  That’s what I am.

‘And, Gyles, all the stars I’ve worked with have been my tutors.  You know, I never met a star who behaved badly.  It’s the insecure ones with second or third billing who won’t come out of the motor-home to do the scene because the wig’s not right, the frock’s wrong, the trousers won’t fit.’

 Are any Americans coming to his party?

‘Elizabeth Taylor.  I like her.   And Jack Nicholson, probably the best American actor there is.  And Sidney Poitier.  From Sidney, you learn dignity.  And I want Shirley MacLaine there because she was the woman who took me to Hollywood to do a picture called Gambit (1966).  They showed her The Ipcress File to recommend the director.  She said, “Forget the director, I’ll take the guy with the glasses.”’

 What about directors?  Caine, in more than eighty movies, has worked with some of the most distinguished names of our time.

‘I’m having two: John Huston and Woody Allen.   The best directors are the ones who say the least.  Huston told me, “The art of directing is casting.  If you cast it right, there’s nothing to say.”   I’m inviting Woody, but don’t expect him to be a barrel-load of laughs.  He’s like all funny men.  He doesn’t talk.  He listens.  He’s waiting for you to say something funny, then he’ll run out to the toilet and write it down.’

 We are running out of time and I am hoping for at least one acid drop to go with all the sugared candy.  ‘Is there anyone you don’t want to see at the party?’ I ask.  ‘Richard Harris, for example?  You and he seem to have this ongoing ding-dong.’ 

‘It’s not a ding-dong, Gyles.  It’s a ding.  I don’t know Richard Harris.  I haven’t seen him for thirty years.   He thinks I accused him of being a drunk.  What I said, in response to a reporter’s question about my generation not doing drugs, was that my generation were drinkers – the lot of us – Burton, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris, me.  This provoked a nasty attack from Mr Harris.  He’d done it before.  Don’t ask me why.  Ask him.  There isn’t a feud because I don’t know enough about him to take part.  I can’t say his works stinks, because I’ve not seen it.’

‘He’s having a success in the Harry Potter film,’  I say.

‘Thank God for that,’ beams Mr Caine, ‘Maybe now he’ll shut up.’

Time’s up.  ‘Who will be the guest of honour?’ I ask.  ‘How about the Prime Minister?’ [It was then Tony Blair.]

‘I like Blair,’ says Caine. ‘He was the one who gave me the knighthood.  I like the idea of New Labour.  I liked John Major too.  He was a much misunderstood man.  He had two great things going for him.  He was a Tory who had been on the dole and he looked a bit like me as Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File.   But, no, the guests of honour have got to be my mum and dad.

‘My mother was a Cockney charwoman.  She said to me once, “How much money do you earn for a film?”  I said, “A million pounds.”  And she said “How much is that then?” as though I had to translate it into a currency she’d understand.  I said, “It means you’ll never have to work again.”  She said, “I’ll miss work.  I’ll miss the girls.”  Her forewoman was Adam Faith’s mum, Mrs Nelhams.

 ‘My mother was a very funny woman.  We were walking down the street once and we passed a girl wearing a mini-skirt.  My mother tut-tutted, “If it’s not for sale, you shouldn’t put it in the window.”

He chuckles.  There are tears in his eyes again. 

‘She died aged 89 in her sleep in bed.  My dad died forty-four years ago, when I was 24.  He was only 56.  He died of liver cancer.  He was a very heavy drinker.  I look like him, so, whenever I’m shaving, I see him.   And at Christmas, my mother, having had a couple of gins and tonics, would look at me and burst into tears because I look so like him.

‘My father saw nothing of my success.  The moment he heard I wanted to be an actor he thought I was gay.  He gave up on me.  But he had a great sense of humour and he was very tough.  I got my spirit from my parents.  I grew up in the Blitz and being an actor is like going through the Blitz.   You learn to survive.

 ‘I know I don’t look it, but my father was part gypsy and being an actor is like being a gypsy, moving from location to location.  You even get to live in a mobile home.  Actually, being on a film is like having love affair.  Twelve fantastic weeks, great sex, and then you part.   I love it.   I love being on the set.  I love it when the guy shouts “action”.  I’m not going to retire.  I don’t like golf.  What would I do?  God willing, I’m going on acting till I die.’

‘Do you think about death?’

‘No, I think about living.’

‘Do you believe in God ?’

‘I believe in God.  If you were me, Gyles, and had my life, you would believe in God too.’