Tony Deyal | Michael Caine: Not many people know that ...

“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface but always paddling like the dickens underneath.” If that is not a wonderful place to start in the “Brainy Quote” of Sir Michael Caine, here are a few more that will help us understand the great man: “I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite.

“Imagine signing that autograph! You’d get a broken arm. So, I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart’s The Caine Mutiny, which was playing in the theatre across from the telephone booth where I learned that I’d gotten my first TV job.” “When I look in the mirror, I see someone who’s happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I’ve had success as I’ve gotten older because I’m able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.

“Things are not quite what they seem always. Don’t start me on class, otherwise you’ll get a four-hour lecture.” “At 69, I got the girl! And it wasn’t a 68-year-old girl, either.” “When you reach the top, that’s when the climb begins.” And, “I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold, but we are not cold. We don’t interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken, we don’t scream in your face with tears. We go home and cry on our own.”

Fortunately for the “Sir”, he is not in tears. In fact, his regular and most famous attributed catchphrase is, “Not many people know that ...”, even though he himself never actually used it in his real life or films until it became a meme. In fact, Sir Michael Caine (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, March 14, 1933) is an English retired actor known for his distinctive Cockney accent, which is a traditional working-class accent, dialect and cultural identity from London, England, particularly associated with the city’s East End.

He has appeared in more than 130 films over a career that spanned eight decades and is considered a British cultural icon. He has received numerous awards, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award. As of 2017, films in which Caine had appeared had grossed more than $7.8 billion worldwide. Caine is one of only five male actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in five different decades. In 2000, he received a BAFTA Fellowship and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. In addition, Caine was regarded as a British cultural icon, with Mairi Mackay of CNN stating: “Michael Caine has been personifying British cool since the Swinging Sixties.” Most of all, the “Sir” not only brought some of British cinema’s most iconic characters to life and introduced his very own laid-back cockney gangster into pop culture, but he himself said, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”

Fortunately, “Sir Michael” is famous for his sharp wit, humour and films because he felt that it was important for others to understand what is important in several areas. Let’s start with “Acting and Career”. As “Sir Michael” said, “First, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don’t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.” Then he made it clear, “Movie acting is about covering the machinery.” Next, he told us all about his “one or the other”.

In other words, “I used to get the girl; now I get the part.” And, finally, he closed with, “I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2 a.m. that people think I am dead.” The “Sir” then moved on to “Life and Advice”. He started with, “Be like a duck. Calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.” Then he advised, “Find what you love, and do it as well as you can. Pursue your dream and, even if you never catch it, you’ll enjoy the chase.” He then told them, “Poverty taught me not to worry about money.” He closed with, “Nothing that has meaning is easy. ‘Ease’ doesn’t enter into grown-up life.” The “Sir” then went to “Fame and Identity”. The “Sir” made it clear, “I’m every bourgeois nightmare, a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.” Then he shared his own especially important belief: “I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You’d get a broken arm.” Finally, he closed with, “I have never seen the film [ Jaws: The Revenge] but, by all accounts, it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.”

In addition, “Sir Michael” also has some “Quotes to Explore”. Here are a few: “I just love to go home, no matter where I am, the most luxurious hotel suite in the world, I love to go home.” “I won an Academy Award for The Cider House Rules, playing an American.” “My problem was that I was blond. There were no heroes with blond hair. Robert Taylor and Henry Fonda, they all had dark hair. The only one I found was Van Johnson, who wasn’t too cool. He was a nice, homely American boy. So, I created my own image. It worked.” “Comedy is underrepresented (and overlooked) in every actor’s life, because it’s so bloody difficult to write.” “Am I a car aficionado? No; for me, cars have always been just for transport. I didn’t even know anyone who had a car until I was 14 or 15.” And one that is very important to the “Sir”, his wife: “My wife comes with me on all the movies, but she is not an appendage to a film star or anything like that. She is a completely intertwined partner. She is the other half of me. Also, we’re still very much in love with each other. We always have been, we always will be.”

For so many of us, women, men, youngsters in school or university, and all of those who have been, or still are, wanting to be in the “columns”, so to speak, there are many things to learn from Michael Caine. First, as he said, “I’m trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.” Then he said, “You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.” That’s so true, especially for youngsters like Michael Caine once was. He tells the youngsters, “I’m a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.” He then told them, “Please don’t ever give up.” In fact, one of the best in the business, Michael Caine, said to all of us, “A lot of my best parts I’ve been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.”

Tony Deyal agreed with Michael Caine: “The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren’t a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.” Same as everywhere in our region. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com