‘ME? HOLDING UP BANKS AT AGE 84? WHAT A BLAST…’
Me? Still holding up banks aged 84?
Nearly 50 years after he blew ‘the bloody doors off’ in The Italian Job, Michael Caine is back with TWO big screen heists. Take cover as he lets fly about his battles with the bottle, the woman who tamed him – and how he may have killed for real...
Ijust hope they keep robbing people. I like it,’ says Michael Caine with a deep chuckle. The definitive actor of our times is about to star in not one but two films about pensioners holding up banks, in the wake of the spectacular Hatton Garden heist by real-life seasoned robbers in London.
‘When you’re 84 years old you’re not expecting loads of work to come charging in. But to get these leading parts in movies at this time of my life? Amazing.’
The first to come out is called Going In Style and it stars Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin with him as a trio of former steel workers in Brooklyn whose company is shut down by the bank – which takes their pension money to pay other debtors and then repossesses his character’s home when he can’t pay the mortgage.
So they hatch a plan to steal back exactly what they are owed from the bank. ‘None of them have got anything,’ says Caine. ‘They haven’t even got the money to go and see their grandchildren. This is about anger at the banks. I think that will resonate with people. During the crash, the banks seemed to be screwing everybody and everything.’
Caine has been a star since Zulu half a century ago and is best known for films such as Alfie, The Italian Job and Get Carter. He’s won two Oscars and more recently appeared in Inception, Interstellar and the Batman movies. But he grew up as the son of a fish porter in bombed-out post-war London and says he remembers what it was like to struggle for survival. He understands why his character Joe takes the law into his own hands. ‘This is the point at which I would be made to rob a bank, if they took the mortgage and the house away, and cheated me out of my pension. I’m not dishonest, but in that case I would do exactly the same as my character does.’
This is a Robin Hood kind of story, but has he ever been robbed himself? ‘No.’ Would he feel differently about it if he had? ‘Yeah and anyone who robbed me would feel differently an’ all. They’d be lucky to feel at all.’
You know the voice. Gruff and ragged, still south London after all these years, shot through with experience but still approachable. No airs, no graces. He’s always felt like our mate on screen, even when playing a ladies’ man like Alfie or a contract killer like Jack Carter.
‘I couldn’t rob a bank normally. I couldn’t come to terms with the idea. If I needed the money I’d find a way of working for it. It’s not about being afraid of doing the act because I’ve been a soldier, so I’m not worried about guns.’
Not a lot of people know this – to coin a phrase the impressionists love but he has never actually said – but this man who has fired guns so many times on screen actually served with the Royal Fusiliers during the Korean War.
Did he kill anyone? ‘Well, you never know whether you did. It was all patrols and darkness and everything. I was an infantryman, it was like trench warfare. Like the First World War. I had a machine gun, you know?’
The question makes him uncomfortable but Caine is a natural storyteller who warms up again quickly and some remarkably honest stuff comes out. He has homes in America as well as a big country house in Surrey, south-east England, but we are meeting in a hotel around the corner from his penthouse apartment by a bend in the Thames. ‘Look at that view. Only 15 minutes from Piccadilly Circus – not bad, is it?’ He looks dapper in black trousers, a French-blue shirt and an expensive, supple leather bomber jacket.
Hatton Garden starts shooting next month, with Caine alongside Dublinborn Michael Gambon and Ray Winstone and Jim Broadbent as the gang who did a most spectacular robbery at a safe-deposit store in London’s jewellery quarter in 2015.
‘They said, “We’re looking for a Cockney thief.” I said, “You’d better get Michael Caine. He’s the most obvious one!”’ He laughs again, because this is a man with a strong sense of the absurdity of being an icon.
Caine plays Brian Reader, the 73-yearold mastermind behind the robbery. ‘It’s the saddest character I’ve ever played. His wife died of cancer. He’s a diabetic. He went out on a tree outside his bedroom window to cut a branch off because it was hiding the view, and he fell and broke his neck. When he was in hospital they found out he had prostate cancer. And since being two years in the prison hospital he’s had two strokes. So I mean he’s not much of a threat.’
Is it tricky playing someone who is alive and in jail? ‘Yeah. I tried to get to see him but I haven’t managed it yet. I’ll keep trying. It’s tricky because I don’t know how he speaks. I was told he was a Cockney, but then the writer talked to his daughter. She said, “Who’s going to play my father?” He said, “Michael Caine.” She said, “He’s too common.”’
He thinks that’s hilarious. ‘It helps, in one way. I was worried about how a thick Cockney accent would go down in America. When Alfie came out, it made me a star in Britain but I had to do new dialogue for the States because they said, “In America, they don’t know what you’re talking about.”’
Alfie was one of the quintessential movies of the Sixties but the young, self-centred womaniser who seemed so attractive then now looks like a terrible sexist dinosaur. Was he just a man of his time? ‘No, there are Alfies about all over the place. Still to this day. I met one at a party last night – he was trying to pick my daughter up.’
Caine has two daughters. Nikki was the child of his short-lived first marriage, to actress Patricia Haines, and is nearly 60 now. Natasha is the daughter of Shakira, whom Caine married in 1973. She’s in her early 40s and single again having been married to a property developer. She’s the one the modern-day Alfie was after.
Did he feel protective? ‘Yeah.’ What would he do about it? ‘I wouldn’t do
‘This is about anger at the banks. In the crash they seemed to be screwing everybody and everything’
‘My father was Catholic, my mother Protestant; I went to a Jewish school and I married a Muslim ’
anything. He’s not going to do anything.’
He gives me the look familiar from many of his 130 movies. The deadly geezer with a blank face but soulful eyes. They’re rheumy now, behind big, tinted, aviator-style spectacles, but that just means he looks more than ever like he would be sorry to have to kill you. ‘You don’t mess with me. I come from Bermondsey.’
Gulp. But then he grins and laughs. That happens a lot. Caine is happy having fresh success as a leading man in what might otherwise be his twilight years. Not to be rude, but his mate Michael Gambon admits to terrible trouble learning lines these days. Does he have any of that?
‘I thought I would forget the lines when I got older but I don’t. It just takes me ten times longer to learn them.’
Shakira travels with him at all times. ‘She runs my life, really. I don’t answer the phone or anything. I do acting. She’s like a very highly paid secretary.’ He laughs, realising belatedly that she might not like him putting it that way. ‘She’s worth every penny! It’s wonderful. We’ve been together for 46 years. We’re quite unused to being apart. We don’t like it. We’re as happy as sandboys.’
How have they managed to stay like that for so long? ‘I don’t know. Luck. I saw her on the television in a commercial [in 1971] and tracked her down and found her through the advertising agency. And I knew she was the one, I don’t know why.’
Today they are bonded by a deep love for their grandchildren. ‘I have a twin boy and girl, seven, and a boy, eight, and I love being with them. I read a wonderful saying in the paper: “Grandchildren fill a hole in your heart you didn’t know was empty.” And it’s absolutely true. You don’t think about grandchildren, then suddenly they become the biggest thing in your life.’
Does he take them for days out around London? ‘All the time. Also, I have a big house in the country with a swimming pool and a big garden where you can play football. There are deer and foxes in the garden and ducks on the lake. So they come down there and play and have a wonderful time. And there’s a big home cinema.’
Sounds idyllic, but how can you raise children or grandchildren in a situation like that without them getting spoiled?
‘Oh well, I always give them a price above which they can’t go. We get the catalogues at Christmas with the toys and I say, “I’ll do the £50 one. I can’t do £100. I can’t afford it.” I can, of course. I lie all the time about not being able to afford things, in order that they know there is a ceiling on what they get. I grew up poor so I know the story.’
One of these days they’re going to realise the truth, aren’t they? ‘Oh they’re gonna do that. My oldest grandson said to me the other day, “You’re very rich, aren’t you?” I said, “No, not me.” He said, “Well, why is your house so much bigger than ours?”’
Caine was born during the Depression in 1933 and christened Maurice Micklewhite – and only changed his name officially to Michael Caine last year, ‘because of the airports, once we got started with the heavy examinations for terrorism. I was standing there forever and they’d say, “So you’re Michael Caine? You’ve got Maurice Micklewhite on your passport.” And my father died, so I thought, I can change it without offending him.’
Hang on, he died in the Fifties. So why wait? ‘I didn’t want to offend his memory. But in the end it got so much I thought, “He’ll forgive me.” So I changed my name.’ Does he think of himself as Michael or Maurice? ‘Oh I’m Michael now. He makes more money than Maurice did!’
Is he nostalgic? His fellow south Londoner David Bowie went back during his final years to have a look around, secretly touring the streets in the back of a limo. Caine lives right across the river from his old haunts – does he ever go back? ‘Oh yeah,’ he says and launches into a story about an even bigger star he met there in the Sixties, when he was just becoming famous himself.
‘Many, many years ago, I saw Charlie Chaplin looking at an old disused theatre near the prefab where I lived just after the war, called the South London Hippodrome. I told him my mum saw him there on her honeymoon. He didn’t know who I was. I was just an annoying fan, you know?
‘Chaplin said, “Do you know who I was in that with? Stan Laurel. And do you know what happened after we did that? We both got on a boat and we went to America.”
‘I’m standing there not believing I’m talking to Charlie Chaplin. And you know what’s interesting? After we had that chat, I got on a plane to America and became a movie actor.’ Caine made his first film in Hollywood in 1966, appearing with Shirley MacLaine in Gambit.
Did he keep in touch with any of his old friends from south London? ‘No. You have to remember, I was for nine years a penniless actor. So I could never buy a round in a pub and they blew me out. So when I got some money, I said, “Sod you lot!” I made a whole new lot of friends, the ones I’ve had for 50 years.’
He lists some of them: ‘Johnny Gold, who ran the nightclub Tramp and is one of my oldest friends, Terry O’Neill the photographer [who created many of the iconic portraits of Sixties stars], Leslie Bricusse the composer [who won an Oscar for a song in Dr Dolittle and also wrote Goldfinger], Roger Moore, Sean Connery...’
Does he still hang out with them? ‘Yeah, but not with
Roger. He’s 90 and lives in Switzerland so I don’t see him so much. I saw Sean when I was making this movie. He’s not been very well. We’re still alive, which is amazing. A lot of us are dead.’
Does that worry him? ‘No. I know I’m going to die. Everyone is. You just try to have the best possible time and stay healthy. As you get older you eat better and drink less. I’m always watching what sort of food I eat now – no cholesterol – and I won’t have that extra drink before I go to bed. I’ll have a cup of Horlicks or something. That’s old age for you.’
He’s certainly changed, then. ‘With heavy drinking, which I’ve done in my life, I’ve controlled that and brought that right down in order to live longer. With Shakira’s help, throwing wine bottles out the window! She’s very critical if I go over the standard two glasses of wine a day.’
He used to drink a bottle of vodka and smoke two packets of cigarettes a day but Shakira took charge and he stopped that a decade ago. She has also changed his diet so that he lost weight, to try to avoid cancer and have a better chance of seeing his grandchildren grow up. ‘She’s the most incredible wife. No ifs or buts or if onlys. God was on my side.’
Does he have a faith? ‘Let’s put it this way. My father was a Catholic. My mother was a Protestant. I was educated by Jews because I was evacuated and I won a scholarship and had to go to a Jewish school. I’m married to a Muslim. So I could take my pick. There is no one religion I would go for, except that if you’d had my life, you would have to believe in God, and I do.’ Is there anything left he would like to play? ‘No I seem to have played every bloody thing.’
He never played Bond, though. How about making a film about the elderly 007, like Ian McKellen’s Mr Holmes about Sherlock in his old age? ‘James Bond as an old man. Yeah. We’ll have to tell Barbara [Broccoli].’ Wouldn’t she want Sean Connery or Roger Moore back? ‘Yeah, well, they’re older than me!’
His character in Going In Style asks one of the others if he wants to drift off into the sunset or go out with a bang. What’s his own answer? ‘I want to drift off into the sunset. Stay at home, grow old with my grandchildren. It won’t happen, though. There’s all these movies left behind.’
What will be his legacy? ‘To say to working-class boys or girls, no matter where you’ve come from, you can do it and I’ve shown it’s possible. I never went to Cambridge. I never went to Eton. I don’t have a degree, I wasn’t a genius at school. But anyone can make it if they really want to work hard.’
Not that Michael Caine is ready to stop yet, while there are elderly robbers out there and movies to be made about them. ‘I was 84 yesterday. I see people in the paper who have died aged 84 and it says, “He had a good innings.” A good innings? I’ve not started batting yet! We’ve only just had the tea break.’
Going In Style is out on April 7
‘I thought I’d forget the lines when I got older but I don’t. It just takes ten times longer to learn them’