Michael Caine: The Elephant to Hollywood

Where Wilson’s was failing in its attempts to educate me, the Tower cinema was doing a lot better – and not just in the world of film. One day I turned up at the box office as usual with my chocolate bar and while I was buying my ticket, the girl behind the glass leant forward and whispered, ‘Give us your chocolate and I’ll show you me tits.’ My jaw dropped. I sneaked a look at her torso. She was no oil painting, but when you’re fourteen, most girls have a certain allure. ‘OK,’ I said hoarsely and pushed the bar across the counter before she could change her mind. She glanced around. The foyer was empty. ‘Here you are, then, Romeo,’ she said and slowly lifted one side of her jumper to reveal a slightly grubby bra. With one finger, she pulled up the left cup until first a nipple popped out and then a whole white breast. It was enormous! It quivered before my staring eyes for at most two seconds before she bundled it back inside her bra, pulled down her sweater, grabbed the chocolate bar and slammed the box office window closed. As I walked the long lonely walk down the darkened corridor to the screen, a sense of injustice began to grow. She’d said ‘tits’ plural! I’d only seen one. And now I was left with no chocolate. It didn’t seem fair to me and I vowed that I’d never pay for sex again. And I never have. Love, yes – at various points – but that’s a different matter.

They say the average teenage boy thinks about sex every fifteen seconds. That wouldn’t have got anywhere near it for me. But of course help was always at hand, so to speak. More constructive help was available at a youth club called Clubland in the Walworth Road, which offered a gym and sport to keep our minds pure and our bodies exhausted. Cold showers were also on the agenda, but I cottoned on to the real purpose of these very quickly. I did join the basketball team since I was already six foot tall but I was a lost cause: the only thing I was really interested in chasing was girls.

I was obsessed with a girl called Amy Hood and one day as I was going up the stairs to the gym, I spotted her through a door, along with all the other best-looking girls in the club. I was standing there with my nose pressed to the glass when the door opened unexpectedly and I fell into the room. I blushed and the girls all tittered but the teacher came over and grabbed me by the collar. ‘Come in!’ she said, hauling me over to the group. ‘You’re the first boy we’ve had all year.’ My lucky day; my twin obsessions – girls and acting! I had stumbled into the drama class.

I’ve never liked critics and it may well go back to my very first review in the Clubland magazine. I was playing a robot in R.U.R ., an obscurely intellectual play by Karel Capek. I didn’t have a clue what it was about. I didn’t even understand the one line I had. Even so, I understood fully the sarcasm behind the young critic’s assessment of my performance. ‘Maurice Micklewhite played the Robot, who spoke in a dull, mechanical, monotonous voice, to perfection.’ Bastard.

Bad notice or not, I was on my way – or so I thought. From then on until I was called up for my national service, I was always in a play. I was also taken under the wing of a man called Alec Reed, a movie fanatic, who used to show his collection of sixteen millimetre silent films at Clubland every Sunday evening. Not only did Alec teach me everything he knew about the history of film, he also introduced me to the technical side of movie-making. Every summer the whole club would go on holiday to the island of Guernsey, off the south coast of England, and Alec would make a documentary of the trip. It was a proud moment for me when my name came up on the credits for the first time – ‘Maurice Micklewhite, Director’. Once again, the audience laughed. Bastards. But I realised they were right. When I made it to the big screen it would have to be under a different name.

Even I had to admit, though, that my name was the least of my problems. I was a tall, gangly, skinny, awkward boy with blond hair, a big nose, pimples and a Cockney accent. All the movie stars of the day – Robert Taylor, Cary Grant and Tyrone Power, for instance – were dark-haired, smooth, sophisticated and very handsome. Even the ugly ones, like my hero Humphrey Bogart, were dark-haired, smooth, sophisticated and very handsome. It’s easier now, of course, but back then people who looked like me would only ever have been cast as the hero’s best friend. I remember even Steve McQueen telling me once that if he’d been an actor in the thirties he would have been the best friend.

So how did I make it in the end as a movie actor? There’s a good ten years of hard graft in the theatre and TV there, of course, before I got to Alfie , but even apart from the acting, you have to have the right face. Take a look in the mirror. Can you see the white on the top of the iris of your eye in relaxed position? Can you see your nostrils looking at your face straight on? Can you see the gums above your top teeth when you smile? Is your forehead longer than the space between the bottom of your nose and the bottom of your chin? If you are a man, do you have a very small head? If you are a woman, do you have a very big head? If you have any of these facial characteristics, you won’t get the romantic leading roles. If, however, you have all of the above, you could probably make a fortune in horror films.

All those years I spent acting at Clubland and later in the professional theatre turned out not to be a lot of help, ultimately. The art of cinema acting is the exact opposite of stage acting. In the theatre you have to be as big and broad and loud as possible, even in the quiet scenes, which is a trick that only the best actors can pull off. Film acting, on the other hand, is about standing six feet from a camera in blazing light and not letting the tiniest bit of acting show. If you are doing it right you make it look very easy, but it takes a great deal of hard work to accomplish. It’s a bit like watching Fred Astaire dancing and thinking, I could do that – and you couldn’t in a million years.

Of course there are some useful tips I’ve picked up along the way… In a close up, choose just one eye of the actor you’re playing opposite, don’t skip between the eyes or you will just look shifty; choose the eye that brings your face closest to the camera; don’t blink if you are playing a strong or menacing character (and remember your eye drops!); if you are playing a weak or ineffectual character, blink as much as you like – just look at Hugh Grant; and if you have to pause after another actor’s line, always start your line and then pause – and you can hold that pause as long as you like. Last of all – full frontal nudity. Don’t do it. Acting is all about control and the minute you are naked you have lost control of what the audience is looking at. But if you absolutely insist on disregarding my advice on that last point, let me offer one final tip: don’t move. When legendary ballet dancer Robert Helpmann was asked, as the notorious naked revue show Oh! Calcutta debuted in London, if he would ever do a naked ballet, he said, ‘Certainly not.’ When asked why, he replied, ‘Because everything doesn’t stop when the music does.’ Wise man.

Even if you’ve got the right face, you still need to have a sense of humour about yourself. I think I’m a good dramatic actor but I always look as if you could have a laugh with me. There’s a connection between the actor and the audience that goes far beyond the part you play and it’s got nothing to do with acting ability. Charisma – you’ve either got it or you haven’t. Who’s got it today? I’d pick Jude Law, Clive Owen, Matt Damon and of those, I identify most strongly with Jude Law. After all, he looks a bit like me – and he’s remade two of my movies. I identify with him in another way, too. The press spend a lot of time attacking him personally. When we played in Sleuth together, one of the critics mentioned that he’d screwed the nanny and I thought – hang on a minute – he didn’t screw the nanny in the movie! He’s a wonderful actor, a great dad to his kids, and he’s a bit of a jack-the-lad, like I was, although perhaps I was smarter at not being caught. But back when my pals and I were living the high life and dating a lot of girls, we didn’t have to contend with the paparazzi or the celebrity magazines the way stars do now. We’d never get away now with what we got up to in those days.