Happy Birthday Michael Caine

Mar 15, 2012 No Comments by WLM[mty]

There are many famous birthdays today, Billy Elliot himself Jamie Bell, Buffy star Mercedes McNab, Billy Crystal, music legend Quincy Jones, movie director Wolfgang Petersen, Dawson’s Creek and Scream creator Kevin Williamson, Battlestar Gallactica Actress Grace Park, American Pie’s Chris Klein and Tudors and True Blood’s James Fralin. Happy Birthday to each and every one of you talented bunch.

However, all are eclipsed by the birthday of the man born Maurice Micklewhite who we all know and love as Michael Caine. From his star making turn in Zulu to the Batman trilogy, Michael Caine has been a staple in the British film industry for nearly 50 years.

Through the 60′s and 70′s Caine was a box office star, Alfie, 3 Harry Palmer adventures, The Italian Job, Get Carter, Sleuth and The Eagle Has Landed won him aclaim and plenty of job offers. Sadly some of those offers turned out to be The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.

The late 80’s and most of the 90’s saw Caine make some odd career choices but with Mona Lisa and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels he still enjoyed some success. As leading roles in movies started to dry up, Caine appeared in a couple of TV series and both Jack The Ripper and Jekyll & Hyde were ratings winners.

Blue Ice, On Deadly Ground and Jaws The Revenge were all noticeable low points, and a return to form seemed out of reach. However with his highly acclaimed performance as Ray Say in 1998′s Little Voice, Caine revived his career. Two years later he won his second Oscar for his performance in The Cider House Rules.

A brief dip back into ropey remakes saw him make a cameo in the woeful Get Carter reboot, the messy update for Sleuth and lets not talk about Bewitched, at all.

Appearing in 5 Christopher Nolan movies he has become the director’s lucky charm, in addition Caine has delivered Oscar worthy performances in Secondhand Lions, Children of Men, Is Anybody There? and of course Harry Brown.

The intensity of his youth was replaced with a quite dignity as he got older, and you just can’t help but warm to him even when he’s playing an unlikable characters. The man himself describes his career of late as being out of work until the next job, but news of his retirement after his next batch of films has been widely known for sometime.

His contribution to the film industry can never be forgotten and his prolific body of work is home to many iconic roles. Not bad for the son of a fish market porter, it’s fair to say the boy done good.