March 11, 2008. Copyright 2008, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Much-loved British actor Michael Caine turns 75
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, March 11, Graphic News:  With his heavy rimmed spectacles, London accent and deadpan delivery, Michael Caine has been affectionately mimicked by amateurs and professionals alike throughout his long and eventful career. Now, at 75, he has achieved a kind of cult status, especially among younger film fans, with some of his early work far more popular today than it was originally. The gangster movie, Get Carter, for example, was considered too violent for the majority of filmgoers in 1971, but has since become so acclaimed that a long-running, though ultimately unsuccessful, battle to save the concrete multi-storey car park featured in it has only just concluded this year. Demolition of the cinematic landmark, in the centre of Gateshead in north east England, is due any day.

Literally a born survivor, CaineŐs childhood in South East London between two world wars was marked by poverty and disease; he suffered from rickets, a condition associated with malnutrition which leaves the legs weak, while his characteristically droopy eyelids date from an infant infection. Evacuation to Norfolk during the Blitz helped him escape the squalor, while National Service in the Korean War gave him experiences which would equip him for many of the tough acting parts he would make his own. Indeed, CaineŐs breakthrough role was a military one, playing the upper crust Lieutenant Bromhead in Cy EndfieldŐs African epic, Zulu, in 1964.

The following year he made The Ipcress File, based on the novel by Len Deighton, the first in a series of films featuring Caine as secret agent Harry Palmer. His performance attracted the attention of Shirley MacLaine, who promptly secured him as her co-star for the crime comedy, Gambit, in 1966. But it was his lead role that same year as the Cockney womaniser, Alfie, which defined him. The film brought lowly-born Maurice Micklewhite -- Caine still uses his birth name in his private life -- international recognition and the first of six Oscar nominations.

His image as one of the trendiest film stars of his day was confirmed three years later with the hugely popular action comedy, The Italian Job (1969), in which Caine starred alongside such comic giants as Noel Coward and Benny Hill, famously racing around the streets of Turin in a Mini Cooper. He went on to work with the great Laurence Olivier in Sleuth (1972), with his friend Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1976), and with half of Hollywood in the 1978 Neil Simon hit, California Suite. Caine himself acknowledges that, in between such high points as Educating Rita (1983), and Woody AllenŐs Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) -- for which he collected an Oscar -- there have been plenty of flops. But even these, he points out, have paid for a lifestyle far removed from his beginnings, which he shares with Shakira, his wife of 35 years.

Knighted in 2000, Sir Michael made it a doubly triumphant year by winning his second Oscar for his portrayal of orphanage director Dr Wilbur Larch, a secret abortionist, in The Cider House Rules. He received some of his best ever reviews for The Quiet American (2005), based on the novel by Graham Greene.
/ENDS