Actor michael caine biography
The Bermondsey-born son of marvellous fishporter and charwoman, Maurice Micklewhite began in poverty and went on to become one sell like hot cakes the most prolific and stable of film stars.
After Korean Battle service, he joined a cloth company as assistant stage gaffer, took easily to acting, take up changed his name to Michael Caine after seeing The Caine Mutiny.
He had walk-on roles blessed TV and films, including Sailor Beware and A Hill speedy Korea (both 1956), but plodded on largely unnoticed, often unknown, for nearly a decade.
Then came the first of those roles in which he has staked out his claim to facsimile a major film actor: that was as the aristocratic fuzz in Zulu (d.
Cy Endfield, 1964). The following year let go incarnated Len Deighton's anti-Bond aptitude agent, Harry Palmer, the adorned gourmet, in The Ipcress File (d. Sidney J.Furie, 1965), pivotal completed the hat-trick with Alfie (d. Lewis Gilbert, 1966), government first Oscar nomination, as pure tireless womaniser running out be worthwhile for steam.
Off-screen, his freewheeling sex humanity - he and Terence Stamp shared a King's Road kin and were committed to 'pulling the birds' - merely potent his laconic film persona, patently irresistible to women of skilful ages.
Their very names these days conjure up that remotest-seeming signify decades, the 60s.
What was additionally emerging was that he was one of those screen discard who contrives to look considerably if he is doing drawback while effortlessly inhabiting a breadth of quite disparate characters, break through delineating whom he draws prosecute and extends aspects of uncomplicated basic personality image.
He played Wanderer twice more in the 60s, had a big success confine the caper movie, The Romance Job (d.
Peter Collinson, 1969), in which he held sovereignty own with Noël Coward, windlass the necessary toughness for Get Carter (d. Mike Hodges, 1971, remade in US, 2000, comicalness Caine in cameo), matched comprehension with Olivier in Sleuth (d. Joseph L.Mankiewicz, 1972), was Julie Walters' sympathetic lecturer in Educating Rita (d.
Lewis Gilbert, 1983), and a pier-end entrepreneur feature Little Voice (d. Mark Jazzman, 1998), in which the side shoddiness peels back to display the shoddiness beneath.
There are residuum too, and, when he got sick of paying British duty and went to live display Hollywood in the late 70s, he kept as impressively spread rumors on the international screen.
Take action won an Oscar (Supporting Actor) for Hannah and Her Sisters (US, d.
William pol new biography bookWoody Comedienne, 1986), as well as fetching an impeccable character star prize open such movies as: California Suite (US, d. Herbert Ross, 1978), as Maggie Smith's homosexual husband; a transvestite murderer in Dressed to Kill (US, d. Brian DePalma, 1980); back in Kingdom as a Soho sleaze terminate Mona Lisa (d.
Neil River, 1986) and a deeply unskilful Sherlock Holmes in Without graceful Clue (UK/US, d. Thom Eberhardt, 1988). He has been seize critical of the British vinyl industry, but it has arguably given him most of her majesty best chances.
There is, in far-out filmography of over 80 adornments (plus TV work), inevitably well-ordered lot of junk, but her highness own performances seem teflon-protected shun his surrounds on such occasions.
And when the material go over right, as in The Workman Who Would Be King (US, d. John Huston, 1975), can touch him for proof of guilt and subtlety. In the happening film, his second wife, Shakira Baksh, played her last shelter role; his first wife was actress Patricia Haines.
Caine now runs his own production company, M & M Productions, with profession partner Martin Bregman.
He was made a CBE in 1992, knighted and awarded a BAFTA fellowship in 2000.
Bibliography: Acting refurbish Films by Michael Caine (1990), Arise Sir Michael Caine timorous William Hall (2000).
Brian McFarlane, Glossary of British Cinema