Our most prolific film stars? Judi and Michael... and not a lot of people know that!
THEIR names are a guaranteed draw for film fans.
and now Dame Judi Dench and Sir Michael Caine have been revealed as the most prolific stars in UK cinema, appearing in an astonishing 111 British movies between them.
Sir Michael, 84, has appeared in 70 British films so far in his 60-year career, while Dame Judi has starred in 41, according to the British Film Institute. The BFI also found the proportion of women in British films has barely changed in 100 years.
Sir Michael once revealed he had ‘never turned down’ a film, which explains his remarkable CV, running to more than 130 films worldwide. The Italian Job star said in 1982: ‘For years I never got a part that hadn’t been turned down by somebody else.
‘alfie was offered to every actor in england. and I knew about it because I wasn’t famous, so nobody tried not to hurt my feelings. I’ve never turned
‘I’ve never turned anything down’
down anything.’ Despite winning two Oscars, Sir Michael once admitted some of his films are not up to scratch. He joked: ‘I’ve made an awful lot of films, and a lot of awful films.’ With typical humour, he has also pointed out that: ‘You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.’
Just behind the educating Rita actor is Leslie phillips, who has appeared in 66 British films.
and Dame Judi, 82, who won an Oscar for her role as elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love in 1999, is closely followed by Dame Maggie Smith and Vanessa Redgrave, who have starred in 40 films each.
The release of Dame Judi’s new film Victoria and abdul pushed her ahead of Dame Maggie, who is sure to be amused that her friend has overtaken her, having joked last year: ‘There are always parts but Judi gets her paws on them first.’
The BFI study also found that women made up 28 per cent of film roles this year – only just higher than 26 per cent in 1913. However, over the same years, the share of women in film crews shot up from 3 per cent to 33 per cent. It also revealed 59 per cent of films in the last ten years had no black actors in lead or title roles.
The study, which looked at 10,000 British films made since 1911, also found that ‘man’ is the most common word in British film titles.
It found 221 films have ‘man’ in the title, for example in The Man Who Had power Over Women (1970) and The Railway Man (2014). Only 71 films have ‘woman’ in the title, including The Impossible Woman (1919), a Woman Of no Importance (1921) and The Invisible Woman (2014).
The study also named Queen Victoria and James Bond as the characters most frequently featured in British cinema, appearing in 25 films each.