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Academy Fellowship
A FELLOW
ONE TIME PVT. MICKLEWHITE OF THE QUEEN’S ROYAL REGIMENT ACCEPTS THE BAFTA FELLOWSHIP AWARD IN TRUE MICHAEL CAINE STYLE
Afortnight can be a long time in award ceremonies. But just two weeks after receiving a Best Supporting Actor Oscar - his second - in Hollywood, Michael Caine, at 67, was named BAFTA’s 50th Fellow at the annual Orange British Film Academy Awards.
Yet it was an oddly melancholic Caine - some might say, just a tad churlish - who climbed on stage to a standing ovation to receive the honour from actress Kate Winslet, who recently
co-starred with him in
his eightysomething
film, Quills.
Having been pipped - and visibly jolted - at last year’s BAFTAs to Best Actor for Little Voice by Roberto (Life Is Beautiful) Benigni, Caine was audibly miffed that his latest Academy Award-win- ning stint in The Cider House Rules had also not been recognised on home soil.
“It’s very difficult to win an award round here,” he smiled, thinly. “Thank God they gave me one.” The great actor, who has been making films since 1956 (when he appeared unbilled in A Hill In Korea), claimed that he’s always felt a “loner” and “outsider” in the profession. It was, he added more graciously, “an hon- our to be invited in from the cold by BAFTA.” Now, he said, “I feel more wel- come in my country than before.”
Caine was, of course, cool long before the expression became common currency. With his unashamed South London accent, sharp suits, horn-rimmed glasses and fag on, he epitomised the Swinging Sixties.
Now, more than 30 years after films like The Italian Job not to mention other classic 60s’ credits such as Alfie and The Ipcress File, Caine has, despite his own reservations, moved effortlessly from cheeky working class hero to national treasure. Judging by his current work rate, his cross-generational appeal also remains undiminished.
The yellow curls may have thinned out and Cuban cigars supplanted ciggies but despite the fame and riches of nearly 40 years at the top, the old Bermondsey boy still manages to shine through the starry veneer of claret and country houses.
Of course there have been loads of glit- tering prizes too. On top of three Best
Actor Oscar nominations (for Alfie, Sleuth and Educating Rita), there have been Academy Awards in the Best Supporting Actor stakes for Woody Allen’s Hannah And Her Sisters and now The Cider House Rules.
Yet was this the same Caine who, some years earlier, had said to me rather grandly how he hankered for an Oscar, “but not a Supporting Oscar. I’m not a supporting actor. It’s an econom- ic thing. If I became a supporting actor
it would cut my money by about three-quarters”? We were talking in Jerusalem on the set of Ashanti, “the worst, most wretched film I ever made,” he once recalled. These were the dog days of mer- cenary Michael who’d go any- where for any film so long as the price and the billing was right -
Beyond The Poseidon Adventure, The Swarm, Jaws - The Revenge, The Island... How times, economics and even priorities change.
The man, born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, used to joke that even after he went to Hollywood he was never on either the ‘A’ or ‘B’ list. Instead he was firmly on the ‘Fun’ list - which meant that he and his second wife Shakira, to whom he’s been married for 27 years, were invit- ed to ALL the good parties.
A veteran (at 18) of the Korean War, the one-time Private Micklewhite of the Queen’s Royal Regiment, eventually became actor Michael Caine thanks to the inspiration of Humphrey Bogart who was starring in The Caine Mutiny at the time. “There was another reason for my choice,” says Caine, “a Biblical one. Cain was the brother of Abel who was cast out of Paradise and I felt a great sympathy with him at the time.”
By the time Caine - who claims he was never quite charming enough for the Rank Charm School - was starring in The Italian Job, he was an authentic star on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to his perfor- mances in Zulu; as the promiscuous Alfie; and also as the down to earth anti-hero and Cold War agent, Harry Palmer.
Along with present day successes like The Cider House Rules and Little Voice,
C