(Credit: Alamy)
Ask any film fan about Michael Caine, and they’ll likely identify him as a bonafide movie star. Ask the actor himself, however, and he’ll have a different answer. Growing up in the rough East End of London, Caine’s pathway to becoming an icon of the 1960s and one of Christopher Nolan’s most prized collaborators was not handed to him on a silver platter. By the actor’s own admission, however, it did start with ulterior motives. Around age 12, the future Knight of the British Empire noticed that all the pretty girls were in the drama club, and he decided there and then that that’s where he needed to be.
Flash forward a decade or two, and the scrappy kid formerly known as Maurice Micklewhite changed his name to Michael Caine, who was being celebrated as one of the pioneers of the British New Wave. Eschewing the stuffy conventions and posh accents of previous generations, these filmmakers embraced the spontaneity and real-world themes of the French New Wave, highlighting the lives of the young working class, particularly in London.
Movies like The Ipcress File and Alfie—for which Caine earned his first of six Oscar nominations—defined the period and made the young actor with a humble upbringing and cockney accent the starriest of stars.
At least, that’s what the rest of the world saw. According to Caine himself, it wasn’t quite like that, and the glitz and glamour were never part of his identity on or off-screen. “There’s some actors who hold up a mirror and say ‘Look at me’,” he told an interviewer in 2002. “And you look because they seem to be so much better than you: smarter, better looking, more glamorous than you, and you can spend an escapist two hours with them in a cinema. The other actor, which is me, holds up a mirror and says, ‘Don’t look at me, look at you.’ People see a reflection of themselves in the work I do. When you see a film star walking down the street, everybody is in awe of them. When I walk down the street, everybody talks to me as if they know me. I don’t have that movie star barrier.”
Part of this persona is due to the movies he grew famous for as much as it is his public demeanour. In The Ipcress File, for example, he played a spy who is far removed from even the most unkempt version of 007. “Up until that point, all heroes in action films had been perfect: Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor, even Sean Connery as James Bond,” he said. “With the glasses, we gave [the character] an imperfection to make him more like an ordinary person.”
He went on to point out that having his character cook a meal, despite the producers’ misgivings, also helped to show that he was a person.
Although Caine has never identified as a movie star, it’s more accurate to say that he and his cohort redefined what a movie star was. Instead of being near god-like figures of impossible glitz and polish, they became suave symbols of an exciting new era full of relatable angst and bursting with edgy creativity. He might not have had the smouldering matinee idol looks of Tyrone Power or Clark Gable, but he certainly connected more with a younger audience and became a beloved fixture in the movie industry. Whether he feels like one or not, that unquestionably makes him a movie star.
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