The face of a true class act

> Britain has Hollywood to thank for making a legitimate movie legend out of the otherwise incorrigible Cockney rogue, Michael Caine

Zulu far right) to London’s West End when Endfield came calling.

“He came backstage to see me and said: ‘I want you to play a Cockney corporal in a movie called Zulu’,” Caine recalled in an interview with AFP at the Venice Film Festival.

Being unreachable as a result of not having a phone at his flat at the time cost Caine that part.

But when he went to see Endfield in person, the director had another idea.

“I was very tall, and thin and blond,” Caine says. “He said: ‘You look like an officer, not a corporal. Can you do a posh accent?’

“I said: ‘Yes, I’ve been in rep for nine years, I can do any accent you want’. And he gave me the part.

“Now, the thing about that is, Cy Endfield was an American. If that had been a British director, even if he was a leftwing communist, he would never have given me the part of an officer, and that was the start of my movie career.

“That is how strong the class system was [then].”

Having helped to shatter the suffocating glass ceiling imposed on working-class talent at the time, Caine says that the many benefits he has personally enjoyed have been the key to his longevity in a fickle business.

He is fond of Winston Churchill’s maxim that “if you are going through hell, keep going”, and says the flipside is “if you are in heaven, which I have been for about 60 years, keep quiet about it”.

My Generation director David Batty says Caine’s prolonged success actually reflects an underestimated capacity for reinvention.

“Every decade he has managed to tap into something new – through Batman Begins or things like being the voice in Cars, each new generation is aware of his voice.”

Caine concurs: “Batman was very important because young people know who I am.”

With the demise of free college education for most young Britons, and the high costs involved in living anywhere near central London, creative opportunities are receding again for people from Caine’s kind of background, particularly in acting, as elite private schools increasingly dominate the rollcall of new stars.

But in comments likely to make the likes of actors Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston wince, Caine says star quality cannot be obtained through an expensive education. “What you had then (in the 60s) was people like Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole, and Albert Finney who became giant stars,” he says. “I haven’t seen a recent public schoolboy become a giant star. “I have seen extremely good actors and seen people starring in movies and doing it very well, but icons I have not seen.” It is a tone he has also had cause to employ as a prominent supporter of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. The consequences are uncertain, he acknowledges, while saying the creativity that has marked Britain and particularly London’s post-World War II history is a hedge against downside risk. “Look, we’ve survived all this time, suddenly we’re not going to survive? “It’s unbelievable. I remember when they launched 24-hour news. Every single expert, every politician, 102% of everybody of experience, knowledge, intelligence said it is going to be a load of rubbish. “And it was the biggest success you have ever seen. “That is what I feel about Brexit: whatever happens, it is going to be all right.” – AFP