Secret of Michael Caine’s 43-year marriage? Separate bathrooms!
‘I find the marriage works better with separate bathrooms’ HE made his name playing no-nonsense leading men in films such as Alfie, Get Carter and The Ipcress File.
Now Sir Michael Caine has revealed the decidedly unromantic secret to his 43-year marriage – having separate bathrooms.
The double Oscar winner, 82, who married Guyanese actress Shakira Baksh, 68, in 1973, said the trick to marital bliss is having your own space.
Speaking on The Jonathan Ross Show, to be broadcast on ITV tomorrow, he said: ‘I have been married for 43 years. I take a line from Groucho Marx, who said, “It feels just like yesterday, and you know what an awful day yesterday was”. It was not like that with me. My marriage is fabulous.
‘The secret of a good marriage is two bathrooms. You never want to share a bathroom with a woman or you end up with a little corner for your shaving things and stuff. I am older than she is and I need more space.’
In the interview the actor said he does not ‘understand growing old’. He said: ‘I am 82 and five years ago I was 36. What happened? You don’t change in the mirror. Suddenly you see a photograph and you say, “Who is that old guy there?” and your wife goes, “That’s you”.’
He added: ‘A reporter asked me what did I feel about growing old. But considering the alternative, it’s fantastic.’
He put his longevity down to his diet, saying: ‘I don’t eat sugar and I don’t eat salt.’ And he said Hollywood star Tony Curtis had made him give up smoking when he was younger by throwing his cigarettes into a fire and telling him: ‘You are going to die.’
Sir Michael also said he had only once tried marijuana. ‘I laughed for five hours. I nearly got a hernia,’ he said. ‘I thought, “I am never smoking one of them again” and I never did.’