Caine looks back in ‘Blowing the Bloody Doors Off’

Michael Caine has been looking back, and on the whole he likes the view. Regrets? He’s had few.

The 85-year-old star of “Alfie,” ”Get Carter“and ”The Dark Knight“— among many, many others — reminisces fondly in ”Blowing the Bloody Doors Off,“whose title adapts a line from his 1969 heist caper ”The Italian Job.“Being published Tuesday in the United States by Hachette, it’s part memoir, part advice manual for aspiring actors and anyone else nursing an elusive dream of success.

Most of the advice is resolutely old-fashioned. Learn your lines. Work hard. Be nice to people. And be lucky. Caine knows he has been extremely fortunate.

“The luck I’ve had, you couldn’t make it up,” Caine said during an interview in his riverside London apartment, with a panoramic view up and down the Thames. “I mean, even once I was a success, I made a lot of flop movies. But I only made three at a time before I had a hit.”

In print and in person, Caine describes his success as sequence of lucky breaks. His first big movie break, as a British Army officer in “Zulu” in 1964, was followed by a role as a world-weary spy in “The Ipcress File.” On the back of that came his breakthrough as a callous man-about-town in “Alfie.” That film made blond, bespectacled Caine a symbol of Swinging London, brought him American fame and earned him the first of six Academy Award nominations.

He went on to win two Oscars — for “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “The Cider House Rules.” Later came a stint as butler and mentor Alfred in three Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan.