Don’t snack, wear trainers and take a younger wife!
Michael Caine’s secret to a long life (Not a lot of people know that)
THE secret to a long, happy life is to marry a younger woman, stop eating between meals – and wear trainers, 90-year-old Michael Caine has revealed. In an interview this weekend Caine says his advice for longevity is ‘younger wives, no snacking and wearing trainers all the time – and you have to be careful not to fall down’.
He married model Shakira Baksh in 1973 after seeing her in a TV advert and tracking her down. She was 26 and he was 40.
They have a daughter Natasha and three grandchildren he says also help to keep him youthful. ‘You want to live for ever to see what they do with their lives,’ he adds.
Oscars winner Michael, who has starred in more than 160 films, counts ‘dull’ political correctness among the worst changes he has seen in his 70-year career.
He also hits out at ‘intimacy co-ordinators’ on modern film sets who make sure actors do not overstep the mark when filming sex scenes, which has become the norm since the birth of the #MeToo movement.
He says: ‘Thank God I’m 90 and don’t play lovers any more is all I can say. In my day you just did the love scene and got on with it without anyone interfering. It’s all changed.’
In his latest film The Great Escaper, Caine plays a Second World War veteran who sneaks out of his care home to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings in Normandy.
He stars opposite Glenda Jackson, who died in June aged 87 just before the film was previewed. But Michael says he had ‘no idea’ that she was in poor health during filming.
‘I was totally stunned when she died ten days after we had a private preview of the film,’ he says. ‘She was a total trouper. She didn’t seem ill or anything.’
He was recently spotted walking with a frame on holiday in Barbados and says he falls over ‘all the time’. He has been using a walking stick for five years after a fall on ice and has had spinal surgery.
His co-star in the film John Standing, 89, sympathises, saying: ‘It’s a bugger, suddenly you are crashed down on the pavement.’