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Michael is 75 not out

Michael Caine
  • Posted at 1:22pm
  • 07 March 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

When I met Michael Caine in early 2000, he was covered in blood. Stage blood – he was playing a promoter in boxing movie Shiner. That morning, a newspaper had run a story about him illustrated by a caricature. “Everybody else gets a photo,” he railed. “I’m a bloody cartoon!”

Caine was still prickly about public perception. (“A vulgarian,” was how he felt he was regarded.) Even though he’d won Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules, he still felt undervalued.

I think that prejudice has evaporated. Yes, we still love his early films – many of which (Alfie, Zulu, The Italian Job) are showing in a birthday tribute on Sky Movies Classics from Monday 10 March (he’s 75 on Friday 14). But he’s long since blown the doors off that cockney geezer persona, with the likes of Educating Rita and Children of Men.

With a second turn as Alfred the butler in this summer’s Batman film The Dark Knight, his renaissance is confirmed. He’s a bloody national treasure.

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