The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [91]
Being one of the six thousand industry members of the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences who vote for the awards involves being sent the most fantastic Christmas present any film buff could ever want: the ‘screeners’. These are the DVDs of the eligible films made over the previous year, sent to us by their producers, all of whom are hoping to get nominations. The screeners arrive at the beginning of November, just as the English weather is getting so nasty I don’t even want to look out of the window. Thanks to the Academy, we don’t ever have to – my family and I hibernate into the cinema and live on screeners until the worst is over. What better way is there to survive a British winter?
Although British winters were one of the many reasons Shakira and I had decided to relocate to LA, by 1983 I had found myself becoming increasingly homesick. I had given the performance of my life in Educating Rita and we decided that, much as we loved Hollywood, if I didn’t win the Oscar, there was no professional reason to stay on and we would move back to England. I didn’t win, but in my mind I had won because I was going home, and so my delight at Robert Duvall’s Oscar was genuine. It’s always awkward being a loser – especially when people come up and commiserate with you – and so it was somewhat of a relief not to have to go to the Governor’s Ball on the night of the Awards and instead go straight to Swifty’s party – the very first he ever gave. But I was completely unprepared for what awaited me there: as I came into the restaurant I was greeted by a standing ovation from all the brightest and best in the movie business. As I stood there with tears streaming down my face, Cary Grant came up to me and gave me a hug. ‘You’re a winner here, Michael,’ he whispered. I was overcome – how could I leave people like this? But I knew I had made the right decision – and I knew, too, that we would be back and that the friends we had made would be friends for life.
After a trip to Brazil for Blame it on Rio, an adaptation of a French comedy in which a middle-aged man (me) is seduced by his best friend’s daughter (unfortunately the charm of the original was lost in translation and it got panned by the critics), we went back to England to look for a house. The summer of 1984 was just gorgeous and the perfect time to house-hunt: the countryside was looking its absolute best. We wanted to find a house on the river, like the Mill House but further away from London in the deep country, and, above all, in a village that had no through road. Property prices were booming in southern England at the time and with this and our list of stipulations it was very difficult to find the right place. We had just been gazumped (a nasty English practice in which someone jumps in with a higher offer after a seller has accepted yours) on a house that met all our criteria and were feeling very grumpy when the estate agent told us an offer on another house in the same village had fallen through that day. As we drove up through the gates marked ‘Rectory Farmhouse’ Shakira leant over to me and whispered, ‘We’ve got to have it!’ ‘We haven’t even bloody seen it,’ I grumbled – but I should have known better. Shakira has an uncanny ability to know things, and in this instance she was absolutely right. The house was gorgeous – about two hundred years old, with gabled windows and beautiful oak beams and it was surrounded by what had once been a magnificent garden with – I could hardly believe our luck – two hundred yards of river frontage. We bought it on the spot – and what’s more, we arranged with the owner to rent it from her for the summer until the purchase went through.
So from all the glamour and organised luxury of Hollywood we moved in to a