The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [148]
And my personal favourite – they say that one glass of red wine a day is good for you, so I always drink two on the principle that it must be twice as good for me.
Epilogue
So now I’m in the fortunate and luxurious position of only working when I want to. I don’t like having to get up early in the morning or spending a long time learning lines, so these days I only work with offers that I really can’t refuse. It’s very different from the way I used to be. From the age of twenty to the age of twenty-nine, I was obsessed with becoming an actor – and when I finally got to Hollywood, I could never quite believe that I had made it and so I kept on working for fear it would all disappear on me.
These days, I don’t think like that at all. I don’t see myself as a Hollywood movie star – in fact I don’t see myself as anything in particular. I’m aware that I have this image in the media and I have to confess that I quite like it, but of course I’m not allowed to take myself too seriously. I once tried it on Shakira. ‘I’m an icon,’ I said. ‘It says so in the paper.’ ‘You may be an icon,’ she said, ‘but you’d better take the rubbish out!’
Of course we still go back to Hollywood – it’s an incredibly important part of our lives and many of our friends still live there. But the links are loosening. I had thought it was all over in 1992, but it turned out that it wasn’t. Now, I think it probably is.
The first hint of this came during a visit to LA last year when we went to a restaurant on Little Santa Monica called Dolce Vita. It was Frank Sinatra’s favourite restaurant and as we walked in, I remembered the night long ago when he had first brought us there. As Shakira and I walked to our table, which was right across the room, the faces of friends of ours kept appearing out of the darkness to say hello. When we finally reached the table and sat down, I asked Shakira, ‘Did you notice anything special about the people who have just greeted us?’ ‘Well,’ she said, a bit puzzled, ‘they are all friends of ours . . .’ ‘I know that,’ I said, ‘but they were all women, and they are all widows.’ I could see at once that she understood: Barbara Sinatra, the widow of Frank, Veronique Peck, the widow of Gregory and Barbara Davis, the widow of our billionaire friend, Marvin.
This time, as soon as we arrived, Shakira and I went for a drive through Beverly Hills, for old time’s sake. As we drove around we pointed out to each other the houses of people we had known: Danny Kaye, Jimmy Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire among others. When we finally got back to the hotel, I had another question for her. ‘Did you notice anything about those houses we were looking at today?’ I asked. This time Shakira had the answer straight away. ‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘The people we knew who lived in them are all dead.’ Some sort of message was beginning to sink in for us.
The following day, while Shakira had lunch with girlfriends, I had lunch with my Hollywood press agent Jerry Pam at The Grill just off Rodeo Drive, one of my favourite haunts for over forty years. As we sat down, Jerry gave me the news I had been half expecting for some time: he was retiring and leaving Hollywood for good. He is a sprightly eighty-three, so this wasn’t exactly a shock, but given our experiences of the last few days, it was another sign that it was probably time finally to say goodbye to the place I loved so much. After lunch, Jerry and I got to the corner of Rodeo Drive, shook hands, said goodbye – and as I watched him disappear into the groups of Japanese tourists on his way to find his car, I knew it was over.
I didn’t hesitate. I went straight into Ermenegildo Zegna and bought myself a shirt. I always do that when I’m a bit depressed. Carrier bag in hand, I wandered back up Rodeo Drive as the memories flooded back. The history of my Hollywood was all around me.