The King of Cockney Cool: The best of Michael Caine

This British-produced war epic made the cockney Caine a star by casting him against type as the “posh” Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead. Caine believed his performance was a career-ender (“I didn’t like the voice, I didn’t like the look, I didn’t like anything”), but critics and audiences disagreed. So did filmmakers, as Caine was cast as Harry Palmer in “The Ipcress File” off the strength of his work in “Zulu.”

Caine’s first time out as a leading man on the big screen was as the “anti-Bond” spy Harry Palmer in Sidney J. Furie’s “The Ipcress File.” The wittily recalcitrant government operative was a perfect match for Caine’s cockney demeanor, and it became a mildly successful franchise for him in the 1960s with the sequels “Funeral in Berlin” (1966) and the Ken Russell-directed “Billion Dollar Brain” (1967). He came back to the character in the 1990s for the made-for-TV “Bullet to Beijing” and “Midnight in St. Petersburg.”

Caine’s charismatic portrayal of a cad who begins to question his womanizing ways earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Caine’s character often breaks the fourth wall to directly address the audience, and it’s a testament to his innate charm that we stick with him even as he treats women like objects of pleasure. The film was Caine’s first big hit as a leading man in the U.S.

This ultra-clever heist flick from director Ronald Neame casts Caine as a suave cat burglar who teams up with a showgirl (Shirley MacLaine) to steal a valuable statuette from the world’s richest man (Herbert Lom). The less you know about this one going in the better, but it’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that Caine and MacLaine make for a scintillating onscreen pairing.

The swinging 1960s London setting and those nifty Mini Coopers threaten to steal the show, but Caine is at his roguish best as a cockney crook who convinces an imprisoned British mob boss (Noël Coward) to bankroll a seemingly impossible heist of $4 million worth of gold bullion. Caine keeps you riveted as the plot slow-burns to its thrilling getaway car chase finish.

Michael Caine has been associated with a number of flops throughout his prolific career, and many of them deserved to tank. “The Last Valley,” however, deserved much better. This Thirty Years’ War epic from writer-director novelist James Clavell stars Caine as the captain of a band of mercenaries who take refuge in an isolated village as war and famine engulf the outside world. The intellectual sparring between Caine’s hard, pitiless captain and Omar Sharif’s enlightened teacher are an invigorating contrast to the pastoral 70mm-shot beauty of Austria’s Gschnitztal Valley.

“You’re a big man, but you’re out of shape. With me, it’s a full-time job.” Caine has played some tough customers in his career, but never anyone quite as vicious or cruel as gangster Jack Carter in Mike Hodges’s 1971 revenge classic. If you’re making a list of iconic Caine moments, you might very well start with the scene in which he coolly strolls out of his flat stark naked with a shotgun after being visited by a pair of henchmen for a London mob boss. Carter’s lack of shame is literally on full display in this moment.

British acting generations (and styles) clash in this first-rate adaptation of Anthony Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning mystery. It’s a twisty battle of wits between an older author of detective novels (Laurence Olivier) and his wife’s young hairdresser/lover (Caine). It’s enormously entertaining to watch the most lauded Shakespearian actor of his age go up against the cockney upstart who’s all the rage. Caine took the Olivier role opposite Jude Law in Kenneth Branagh’s disappointing 2007 remake.

John Huston’s rip-roaring, Kipling-based British colonial misadventure stars Caine and Sean Connery as a pair of British soldiers who become the divine rulers of a small region in Afghanistan. Caine and Connery are a joy to watch as they dishonestly connive their way to the crown. Though the film received mostly excellent reviews, some critics singled out Caine as the film’s weak link. It’s a broad performance to be sure, but it’s totally in keeping with the character’s bluster.

Irwin Allen’s disaster movie formula soured with this big-budget flop starring Caine as a scientist scrambling to save the United States from a killer bee invasion. Caine considers it one of his worst movies, but only “The Swarm” could allow him to deliver a soliloquy this quietly devastating: “We've been fighting a losing battle against the insects for fifteen years, but I never thought I'd see the final face-off in my lifetime. And I never dreamed that it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friend.”

Brian De Palma’s seminal erotic thriller stars Caine as a New York City psychiatrist who gets caught up in a murder investigation involving two former patients. He seems like a reasonable and compassionate shrink at first when he’s listening to Angie Dickinson’s tales of marital woe, but as the film progresses we begin to realize he’s more involved in the gruesome slaying than he lets on. Few actors can make a seemingly even-keeled character feel as menacing as Caine.

Ira Levin’s Broadway smash drew favorable comparisons to “Sleuth,” so it was only natural that Caine would be recruited for the inevitable Hollywood adaptation. Caine plays a struggling playwright in need of a hit, which he finds in a new play written by a talented student (Christopher Reeve). The rapid succession of twists and double crosses might leave your head reeling, but Caine and Reeve keep the audience engaged with their deliciously malevolent scheming.

Caine received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Actor playing a literature professor who attempts to enrich the intellectual life of a working-class hairdresser (Julie Walters). This adaptation of Willy Russell’s stage play hasn’t aged terribly well, but Caine is still a delight as the alcoholic instructor who rediscovers his purpose as a teacher via his plucky pupil. 

Movies don’t get more wrongheaded than this infamous farce about two men who attempt to escape the dire reality of their failing marriages by zipping off to Brazil for a vacation with their teenage daughters. Caine plays the unhappy husband who finds drunken solace in the arms of his best friend’s seventeen-year-old daughter, and, well, it gets creepier from there. It’s a testament to Caine’s irresistible charm that we don’t blame “Blame It on Rio” on him.

Caine’s portrayal of a married man falling foolishly in love with his wife’s sister earned him his first Oscar (for Best Supporting Actor), and it remains one of his finest performances. We’ve seen Caine work his cockney wiles on women before, but he’s never seemed more vulnerable or, frankly, human than he is here as he pitches illicit woo to Barbara Hershey.

This somewhat forgotten Alan Alda comedy about a movie crew barging into a North Carolina town to shoot a film based on a local author’s (Alda) book gives each member of its impressive supporting cast – including Michelle Pfeiffer, Bob Hoskins and Lillian Gish – the opportunity to cut loose. No one’s having more fun than Caine, who gets the plum role of a carousing movie star prone to romancing any woman unfortunate enough to enter his orbit.

Caine is downright sinister in this pitch-black neo noir from writer-director Neil Jordan. Bob Hoskins stars as an ex-con who’s pulled back into the mob life by his former boss, played with dripping malevolence by Caine. The disquieting film generally belongs to Hoskins and Cathy Tyson, but the air of ominousness that hangs over the story is all courtesy of Caine.

The third and final “Jaws” sequel is memorable less for Caine’s performance as an amiable island pilot than the fact that the filming of the movie kept him from accepting his Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1987 for “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Nothing sums up the life of a working actor better than that. When asked years later if he’d seen the film, Caine remarked that he hadn’t. “By all accounts it is terrible,” he said. “However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

Caine is perfectly cast in the David Niven role in this remake of the 1964 con-man farce “Bedtime Story.” His refined pilfering is challenged by the more aggressive thievery of American hustler Steve Martin, but the two crooks set aside their differences and join forces to bilk a daffy heiress (Glenne Headly) out of $50,000. Caine plays straight man to Martin’s wild-and-crazy antics, but he gets one of the film’s biggest laughs with his delivery of the line, “Ruprecht, do you want the genital cuff?”

Michael Frayn’s backstage farce about a group of theatrical has-beens and never-gonna-bes bumbling through a misconceived production of a terrible play (also a farce) translated surprisingly well to the big-screen thanks in large part to an immensely talented cast anchored by Michael Caine. As the director of the doomed production, Caine mostly sets up his co-stars for big laughs, but he earns one of the biggest guffaws in the film when his posterior makes flush contact with a potted cactus.

Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is one of the most adapted works in the entire history of literature, and one could argue that it’s never been done better than this. Of course, most movies are improved by the presence of The Muppets, but it’s impossible to think of an actor who’s seemed more at home with Jim Henson’s felt creations than Michael Caine. His transformation from glowering grump to grinning goof is a joy to behold, and the source of one of our very favorite gifs.

Caine won a Best Actor (Comedy or Musical) Golden Globe for his garish portrayal of a third-rate talent agent who stumbles across a great big singing voice in the meekest of packages. Jane Horrocks is the star of the show, belting out standards like “The Man that Got Away” and “Big Spender” with aplomb, but Caine is loads of fun, too, hamming it up in an atypically sleazy manner.

Phillip Noyce’s superb adaptation of Graham Greene’s Saigon-set drama about the United States’ first toe dip into the treacherous waters of the Vietnam War stars Caine as a British journalist who watches in horror as a young CIA operative (Brendan Fraser) orchestrates atrocities to further his country’s objectives. It’s a fascinating love triangle, an angry political tract and a terrific showcase for Caine, who received his sixth Academy Award nomination for his splendid work as the world-weary Fowler.

Caine’s run as Christopher Nolan’s good luck charm began with his portrayal of Bruce Wayne’s loyal servant Alfred in this first of three somewhat popular Batman movies. Of all the Alfreds over the years, Caine’s interpretation is the warmest. His fatherly affection and concern is a necessary complement to Christian Bale’s emotionally remote vigilante. We really only come to care for Wayne through Alfred’s love for him.

Christopher Nolan’s precision-plotted tale of warring magicians is narrated by Caine’s character, a manufacturer of illusionist equipment (an ingénieur, if you will) who serves as a mentor of sorts to Christian Bale’s madly ambitious conjuror. The telling of the tale is something of a magic act itself, which leaves the film feeling a little chilly. As in Nolan’s Batman films, Caine is called upon to provide a dash of humanity to the proceedings.