Caine’s diamond wheezers!
In a new film Michael Caine plays the ringleader of a gang of pensioners who pulled off a £14m heist. Here he tells Jenny Johnston it was perfect for bringing together...
Michael Caine was at home with his wife, watching the incredible story of London’s Hatton Garden heist unfold on the news. The gang behind the 2015 robbery – arguably the biggest in British history; certainly one of the most audacious – had been revealed not as the elite young team from Eastern Europe or Israel that the police had expected to eventually find, but as a load of, as Caine puts it, ‘old codgers in cardigans’.
Mostly cockney pensioners (although Dublin plumber Hugh Doyle was 48 when he took part in heist) more career criminals than saltof-the-earth geezers, their ‘last hurrah’ wasn’t a coach trip to the seaside, but a carefully planned raid on a supposedly impenetrable underground safety deposit facility in London’s jewellery quarter. They drilled through a concrete wall to gain access, escaping with gold and jewels worth £14m.
Michael’s immediate reaction? The same as everyone’s. ‘I said, “This would make a great film,” and I remember turning to my wife and saying, “I bet when they do it, they come to me.”’ Where else?
Holed up in a London hotel, talking about what he openly hopes will be the role that brings him that elusive Best Actor Oscar (he already has two Academy Awards, but they are for Best Supporting Actor), Caine, 85, admits there were a few hurdles to overcome before he got the part of the gang’s Mr Big, Brian Reader.
‘He was a few years younger than me – 76 to my 82 at the time – but I said I’d be fine with make-up.’ He leans in, conspiratorially. ‘The thing is, once you get past 70, you all start to look alike.’
But there was another problem. It wasn’t an option for Caine to meet the real Brian Reader, who was being held at Her Majesty’s Pleasure (‘the police wouldn’t let us near him’), so the only contact the production team had was with his daughter Joanne. Did she leap at the idea that the legendary Michael Caine would play her father? No, she did not. He rolls his head back and laughs. ‘The first thing she said in response was, “Michael Caine? Oh, he’s not right. He’s too common.”’
Thankfully, his decades in the business have resulted in a thick skin. ‘I did what I tell my children and grandchildren to do in these circumstances and try to find the positive. It was interesting, actually. What she was really saying was that although her father was a cockney, he’d married ‘up’, so he talked more posh. It was helpful, because I knew I had to go more posh with the voice.’
What a cast has been assembled alongside Michael, though. On screen he is joined by some of the biggest names in film history. Some of the oldest too. Michael Gambon is there, as is Tom Courtenay, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone and Paul Whitehouse. The baby of the operation is Charlie Cox, a mere 35 years old. The combined age of the actors playing the gang? An eye-watering 468 years – and, of the older actors, each one (apart from Michael Caine) seems astonished to find themselves on a film set with someone even older. ‘I was miffed,’ laughs Tom Courtenay, 81. ‘I’m used to being the oldest on set, but Michael Caine beat me.’
King Of Thieves is perhaps the funniest heist movie you’ll see, with lots of humour coming from the age of the men involved. Tom plays look-out man John ‘Kenny’ Collins, described by his colleagues as ‘wombat-thick’ and ‘as deaf as a post’. In the film he dozes when he’s supposed to be alert; his drink of choice is a nice cup of cocoa. He brings corned beef sandwiches on the job. James Bonds they are not.
‘It’s a funny situation because of the age of the men,’ says Caine. ‘They’re not handsome, young, romantic guys, tough and off fighting everybody, they’re mainly fighting each other!’ They’re also fighting old age, infirmity, even incontinence in the case of Gambon’s character ‘Billy the Fish’ Lincoln. Some of the most unlikely heist movie moments involve them sitting round a kitchen table talking about their various ailments – and counting out their medication. There is some nudity in the film, but it involves Jim Broadbent whipping his pants down so Ray Winstone can administer an insulin shot.
The on-screen banter spilled over into real life. ‘It was the most fun I’ve ever had on a set,’ says Courtenay. ‘I’ve been swapping emails since with Jim Broadbent about hearing aids.’
Much of the fun seems to have involved everyone doing Michael Caine impersonations. Ray Winstone’s makes it into the film, in a rather surreal moment. Paul Whitehouse obviously made a career out of his, in his Harry Enfield And
Chums days. ‘Oh, they were all at it,’ admits Caine himself. ‘Paul’s is very good. And I did one too.’ What, Michael Caine did Michael Caine? ‘Yeah.’ Do you do a good Michael Caine, I ask Michael Caine. ‘I do,’ he grins. ‘But you know who does me best? Tom Hanks.’
Interestingly, Winstone is the only actor who met his real-life counterpart beforehand, going into prison to visit him (‘I wouldn’t dream of
going to see the man in jail,’ says Tom Courtenay, by contrast). But Winstone actually knew Danny Jones from childhood – a very rare situation for an actor to find himself in. ‘Very rare, and a really tricky situation,’ he admits. ‘I’ve known Danny for most of my life. I know his family. I always liked the boy. I actually went into prison to see him before we started, out of respect, really. I wanted to explain what we were doing to him.’
Of all the cast that I speak to, Winstone is the one with the most romantic view of the gang members, perhaps because he is also from their ‘manor’. In another life, he could have been one of them, he admits. ‘I’ve been unlucky enough to visit prisons for much of my life. They are not the nicest places, but I was a lucky boy not to go down that route myself.’
There will be accusations that this film glamorises the men in a way they do not deserve. Undoubtedly, you do find yourself rooting for them. Ray Winstone makes no apologies. ‘Men like Danny Jones were geniuses, in some ways. If they’d taken another route they’d have headed big corporations, or been civil engineers. Danny Jones wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t a paedo-
MICHAEL CAINE PLAYING MY DAD? OH, HE’S NOT RIGHT. HE’S TOO COMMON
phile. He’s a thief; it’s not a great thing, but I kind of understand it. They’re all gentlemen, not the sorts going round using machine guns in bank raids. It’s a bit Robin Hood.’
Not all of it. Jim Broadbent plays perhaps the most twisted of the men. His character, Terry Perkins, had form for dousing a previous victim in petrol and waving a match over him – something the writers incorporated in this film. Broadbent delivers a stunning performance, all the better because we’re used to seeing him in more bumbling, benign roles.
The jury will be out on who actually puts in the best performance in this film, but according to Winstone, there is only one guv’nor. ‘Michael carries the film. It’s his moment.’ Can he predict that elusive Best Actor Oscar for Caine? ‘Maybe this will be his moment. He deserves it,’ he says.
Back to the legend himself. Today, in the flesh, he looks frailer than you expect Michael Caine to look, but he could still pass for 65. Last year he fell on some ice, tearing ligaments in his ankle, and the recovery has been tortuous. It is the sort of injury that, in so many elderly people, precipitates the beginning of the end.
He eases himself onto a chaise longue, and stretches out (‘they keep telling me to keep my foot up’). ‘I was in a wheelchair for a while,’ he says brightly. Did he hate it? ‘It makes you lazy. People push you. You have to tell everyone to go and get stuff. My wife is fed up with it. I keep saying, “Go and see if you can find my shoes.”’ Now, he uses a walking stick when he goes out (‘so the leg doesn’t collapse in the street’), but it isn’t the massive hindrance it could be. ‘I embrace that motto of “finding the positive”,’ he says. ‘I’m starting filming in the Czech Republic this month but the director has said, “Look, you’re playing an 80-year-old. We’ll just give him a walking stick.”’ He beams. Being Michael Caine makes being old so much easier.
Then again, his attitude towards the passing years is everything. He says he worked hard at being busy during his recovery period. ‘I wrote a book,’ he reveals. It’s a Michael Caine guide to life, ‘including all that stuff that you don’t have to be clever to know, you just find out’. He’s also been dabbling in fiction. His next career could be as a novelist. He tried before and wrote a ‘kind of thriller’ based around a plane that flew into some buildings. It was pre-9/11, though: ‘So when those planes went into the towers, I put it in a drawer, but I’m getting it out again now.
‘If you’re a movie actor, you’re always working with 150 to 300 people. The things that I do – I’m a gardener, a cook and I love writing – all three you do on your own. I love working on my own. It doesn’t matter if anyone publishes it or anything, or if it’s a success. I would just write the fiction and show it to someone. They’ll say it’s a load of c**p and we’ll throw it away. But I’ll do it.’
There’s a wonderful moment in the film when Caine’s character has an altercation with Charlie Cox’s Basil. The older man feels patronised. ‘Don’t look at me like that... like I’m old,’ he says. Caine gets that – but rails against it. ‘I don’t think there is “old” in the same way there was. It’s further away. People used to die at 60, then 70. Now they die at 80 and 90. I mean, I hear people say they want to retire at 60. What?! I started a whole new career when I was 60! I won an Academy Award at 66!’
Most actors, even legendary ones with the mantelpiece already groaning under the weight of trophies, pooh-pooh the idea that they are chasing an Oscar (or another Oscar, in Caine’s case). He tells it more as it is.
‘Well, you want to win. But I never won Best Actor. I thought I might have won it for Educating Rita but there were four British actors up and one American, so the American won.’
We get chatting about how there are no women in the main cast of
King Of Thieves (save for Francesca Annis, whose character only makes a short appearance), and he addresses the thorny issue of casting and equality. He says he’s been watching the BBC’s new thriller
Bodyguard and is struck by just how many women were cast in traditional male (ie powerful) roles. ‘If you look at Bodyguard, the leader of everything is a woman. And I thought, “Oh, hello, they’re really doing it here, someone’s doing something at the BBC!”’
Is that good, or does it strike him as a bit forced? ‘It’s great. It sorts things out, but it’s not exactly...’ He gives one of his knowing looks. ‘The head of the British anti-terrorist squad, I’m sure, isn’t a woman.’ Not today, perhaps, but women in such positions aren’t exactly unprecedented. His point is social change takes time. ‘You go through these social changes, like the Sixties for us, where nothing happened to the working classes. Then came Richard Burton, Sean Connery, and everyone said, “Really?”’
What of his own future? I whisper the R word (retire) again. ‘I WILL retire,’ he says, then explains that the good thing about retiring as an actor is you can still do ‘cartoon voices and everything’. What about how much longer he can go on in, well, life?
‘Yeah, well, I’ve got three grandchildren, so I want to die when they’re 21. The oldest is nine! But also, my grandchildren are a project. I have things I do for them, with them, about them. I’m a completely besotted grandparent.’
Does he spoil them? ‘Oh yes, I spoil them rotten. But not with money. Actually I buy them things but I tell them I don’t have much money, so they can’t get things that are expensive.’ Alas, they are old enough to be suspicious of this. ‘My grandson says, “But you’re a film star. You must have money.”’
Will he be the sort to leave his entire fortune to his family, or give it all away to a cat rescue centre?
‘I want to leave them opportunities. I’ve already left them all the money for their education. But leaving them diamond necklaces and gold bullion? No. Not my style,’ he says. Clearly, he’s not common after all. King Of Thieves is out on Friday