“The only roles I can get now are 90-year-old men. Or maybe 85. So I better go.” These were the words that actor Michael Caine, 90, spoke just a couple of months ago to announce that he was retiring from acting. He was promoting what was going to be his last film, The Great Escape.
Now, and judging by what some British media publish, it seems that the English artist, who will turn 91 in March, has reconsidered retiring. The details are barely known, as everything is shrouded in a lot of secrecy, but he could soon lead a Netflix production. According to The Sun, it is a series and filming will begin this January, although at the moment no further information is provided: neither who else is involved in the project, nor the title, nor the weight of Michael Caine’s role, which At his age he considers that he can no longer offer the acting skills he used to.
At the moment, neither the actor’s representatives nor Netflix have commented on the matter. If confirmed, it would be an interesting decision in the career of the winner of two Oscars for best supporting actor, first for Hannah and Her Sisters in 1986 and then for The Cider House Rules in 1999.
With a career spanning seven decades, Caine has starred in more than 170 films, including titles such as Alfie, Zulu, The Italian Job to, most recently, Interstellar and The Dark Knight, alongside Christian Bale.
The actor recently revealed in an interview with The Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine that the secret to a long and happy life is to marry a younger woman, stop snacking and wear sneakers. “And be careful not to fall,” he added. Precisely a fall on the ice and subsequent spinal surgery led him to have to use a cane.
He has been married to Shakira Caine for fifty years. He fell in love with her after seeing her in a television advertisement and tracking her down. She was 26 years old and he was 40. He is convinced that Shakira saved his life, as he describes in his book Blowing the bloody doors off: And other lessons in life (2018): “I thought that a little vodka with breakfast was not cause for concern and in the early seventies I was already going for two bottles a day,” he wrote. “By an immense stroke of fortune, Shakira came into my life just in time. The empty feeling faded, she took care of it. Furthermore, she became pregnant, I found myself once again faced with another opportunity to be a father and I soon straightened my course.” They have a daughter, Natasha, and three grandchildren who, he says, also help him stay young. “You want to live forever to see what they do with their lives,” he once said.
However, she was not the first woman with whom he passed through the altar, before he did so with the actress Patricia Haines, whom he met when sharing the bill with her in a play and before beginning to succeed in the cinema. They married in 1954, just after completing his mandatory military service in the British Army and being assigned to the front in the Korean War. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A year later they signed divorce papers.
