The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [0]
Michael Caine
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Michael Caine Business 2010
The right of Sir Michael Caine to be identified as the Author of the Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher,
nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Epub ISBN 9781848945883
Book ISBN 9781444700015
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
To my family: Shakira, Nikki, Natasha, Michael, the father of my three grandchildren, Taylor, Miles and Allegra, and to two of our closest and dearest friends, Emile Riley and Danny Zarem
Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
1 The Twilight Zone
2 The Elephant
3 Learning the Ropes
4 Everyone Gets Lucky Sometimes . . .
5 Hello, Alfie
6 To Hollywood
7 No Holly, No Woods
8 The Fast Lane
9 Falling in Love
10 The Best of the Best
11 An Englishman in LA
12 Oscar Nights
13 Family Secrets
14 Kitchen Sink Dramas
15 Highs and Lows in Miami Beach
16 Back in the Game
17 Home
18 The Mayfair Orphans
19 A Date at the Palace
20 The Quiet American
21 Batman Begins
22 Back to the Elephant
23 What It’s Really All About
Epilogue
My Top Ten Favourite Movies of All Time . . .
My Own Favourite Movies
Picture Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
These are the people without whom I wouldn’t be where I am, writing a book about myself . . .
With everlasting thanks to Toni Howard, Sue Mengers, Jerry Pam and Dennis Selinger, who were not only my agents but were and are four of my closest friends. And in the UK, thanks to Duncan Heath, Kate Buckley and Paul Stevens.
With thanks, too, to all my wonderful friends at Hodder & Stoughton: Kate Parkin, Rowena Webb, Karen Geary and Juliet Brightmore. Without them this book would not have been written (or might have been 1000 pages long . . .)
Prologue
Well, it’s a long way from London’s Elephant and Castle to Hollywood. And the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line, as my story is going to prove. But then I’ve never been known for doing things the easy way. I wouldn’t have minded easy but things just never worked out like that. In fact – although I couldn’t have known it at the time – they worked out a whole lot better.
Eighteen years ago I thought that my career as an actor was over so I wrote my autobiography What’s It All About? to round off my professional life; and that, as far as I was concerned, was that. Fortunately, and not for the first time, I was wrong. Very wrong. The best was yet to come, which, when I look back at my life – the crazy 1960s, the stardom, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood – is really saying something. The last eighteen years have been different – different style, different places and a different idea of happiness – but different has not only been good, it’s been better than I could ever have imagined.
So this is the story of a man who thought it was all over, and found out it wasn’t. It’s the story of the last eighteen years, but it’s also the story of where I came from and where I’m going. I know many people have read my first book, but you don’t get to my age without looking back – and God knows I’ve been to plenty of memorial services – so I’m not going to apologise for telling some of the old tales. But there are plenty of new stories, too, because I’ve had the good fortune to work with a whole new generation of movie stars. And that puts me in a uniquely privileged position. There aren’t many actors whose career has spanned nearly fifty years of