Michael Caine on sex, booze, equal pay and why he thinks we’ll fare better outside the EU
FED up with the stuffy old Establishment, Sir Michael Caine helped start the 1960s revolution that brought new freedoms and put Britain back on the map.
Now the 84-year-old knight of the realm is convinced Brexit will do the same for a whole new generation.
Speaking ahead of the release of My Generation, his documentary about the swinging Sixties, Sir Michael says: “This is why I am a Brexiteer. I remember the entrepreneurial spirit we had in the 1960s before we joined the EU.
“That entrepreneurial spirit is still there, we see it with the young generation and the internet, which is global.
“British culture is still selling internationally. It is incredible what we do on this island.
“We always denigrate ourselves, yet we produce some of the most brilliant people in the world.”
Some of those brilliant people are the friends who appear in his documentary.
They include Paul McCartney, mini-skirt designer Mary Quant, model Twiggy and The Who frontman Roger Daltrey.
Even more important, he says, are the Brit inventors of the “jet engine, radar and the world wide web”, who he then compares to the anonymous Eurocrats in Brussels today.
He says: “Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the EU, used to be Prime Minister of Luxembourg.
Until I was 20 I thought Luxembourg was a radio station.
“Now its ex-PM is running my country. So I want Brexit.”
As a working-class lad who went on to star in iconic movies including The Italian Job, Zulu and Get Carter, Sir Michael has every reason to believe in the talent of young Brits.
‘It was full of beautiful girls’
London's Tramp nightclub was full of beautiful girls, so it was a good place to go
His rise to fame coincided with a period of huge change in our culture.
At the start of the Sixties, the public school-dominated BBC rarely played popular music and its radio broadcasters wore evening dress while reading the news.
As Sir Michael says: “You couldn’t get more snobby than that.”
Born Maurice Micklewhite, the son of a Billingsgate Fish Market porter in South London, he changed his name on the advice of his agent and appeared in more than 100 TV shows before getting his breakthrough film lead in American director Cy Endfield’s Zulu.
Such was the class barrier in England at the time, Sir Michael claims a British director would not have cast him as the gentleman officer he played in that 1964 film.
He says: “The director said, ‘You look like an officer to me, can you do a posh accent?’.
I said, ‘I have been in rep for nine years, I can do any bloody accent you need’.
“Even if I had had a communist English director, he wouldn’t have cast me as an officer.
“There was a whole American film industry here, which gave us chances because they didn’t care about class.”
Sir Michael grabbed that chance, delivering lines such as The Italian Job’s “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” with unmatched swagger.
Within no time he found himself partying with celebrity pals every evening at London’s Tramp nightclub.
Smiling, he recalls: “It was full of beautiful girls, so it was a good place to go.”
The then single actor, who had divorced first wife Patricia in 1962, was a big fan of the sexual revolution — and Mary Quant’s mini skirts.
He says: “I loved the short skirts.
"But the ladies seem to love them, too.
“I look back on the Sixties as freeing women. That was the start.
“Women were free to go out, have a drink and stay out late.
"Before that, I came from — if you kissed a girl the brothers came round and said you’ve got to marry her.”
And he believes that far from a sexist gender wage gap in the movie industry, actresses were crashing through pay barriers first.
He points to Elizabeth Taylor negotiating a million-dollar pay packet for playing Cleopatra in 1963 — a record-breaking deal for either sex.
Sir Michael adds: “I worked with Elizabeth Taylor and I got about ten per cent of the money she got.
“I never realised women were underpaid.
"I worked with Jane Fonda, and they all got more money than me or the same.”
But he continues: “Women want more freedom and I agree with that. I am a big feminist.”
It is an attitude far removed from cheeky Cockney womaniser Alfie, who he played in the 1966 movie of that name.
It is a film that Sir Michael believes is dated now — but not because of his character’s easy-come, easy-go attitude to the opposite sex.
He says: “I don’t think Alfie would be relevant any more.
A guy says he seduced ten women, and you would say, ‘So what? I seduced 20’.
Then, that was part of sexual freedom, that there were ten girls to seduce.”
Along with the sex and rock ’n’ roll, the Sixties were heavily associated with drugs.
In the documentary, Paul McCartney talks about taking mind-altering substances, but Sir Michael says he only tried marijuana once.
In fact, he blames the arrival of LSD and cocaine for killing off the enthusiasm of his generation.
He says: “The Seventies was drugs and the reason the Sixties disappeared.
"Someone would either be on cocaine talking like a bloody machine gun, a load of cobblers, or on LSD going, ‘Wow, isn’t it great’.
"It got quite boring.”
Instead, his vice was alcohol. At one point he was downing a bottle of vodka a day and admits: “We were all drunks in the Sixties.
Women want more freedom and I agree with that. I am a big feminist
“Peter O’Toole was a heavy drinker and I used to go out drinking with him. I couldn’t drink like Peter though.
"He wound up with a metal stomach.”
It was falling in love with second wife Shakira Baksh that he believes saved him from a booze-fuelled demise.
He pursued the Guyanan former Miss World contestant after seeing her in a Maxwell House coffee advert, and they wed in 1973.
Sir Michael, who has a daughter from each marriage, says: “If I hadn’t met Shakira I would be dead, she cut my drinking right down.”
But the two-time Oscar-winner also has to thank now-deceased actor pal Tony Curtis for helping him survive this long.
He explains: “I was at a party chain-smoking.
"I threw one dog end in the fireplace and started smoking another.
“A hand came round me, went in my pocket, took out the cigarettes and threw them in the fire. I turned round and it was Tony.
“He said, ‘You’re going to die if you keep on smoking like that.
'I have been watching you’. Then I gave up smoking.”
Despite his advancing years, Sir Michael, who lives in Leatherhead, Surrey, with Shakira, 71, is still one of Britain’s most in-demand actors.
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He has made 18 movies so far this decade, including Inception and Kingsman.
Next up is The King Of Thieves about the Hatton Garden jewellery heist by ageing robbers.
Sir Michael’s new documentary may celebrate his generation, but it does not mean he thinks it was better than the current one.
He says: “The thing about the younger generation now is you have the internet. You are much more knowledgeable than we are.”
- My Generation is in cinemas from Wednesday. There is an accompanying free exhibition at 3 Carnaby Street in central London, until March 21.