Michael Caine

He legally changed his name to Michael Caine in 2016. He said in an interview that he'd had too many problems travelling with a passport that didn't match his stage name.

As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7. 4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep).

12/18/05: Attended the party at his close friend Sir Elton John's Old Windsor mansion after the singer married David Furnish in a civil partnership ceremony.

Caine has been very open about his political views. He left the United Kingdom in 1979 for tax reasons and did not return until 1987 when Margaret Thatcher had cut the top rate of income tax. An ardent Thatcherite during the 1980s, Caine switched his support to Tony Blair's New Labour Party shortly before the 1997 General Election. In an interview with "The Sunday Telegraph" on 26 April 2009, Caine admitted that he was considering becoming a tax exile again if Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown increased taxes on high earners. He confirmed in an interview with "The Mail on Sunday" newspaper on 1 November 2009 that he had dropped his support for Labour and would vote Conservative at the next General Election. He publicly supported Conservative Party leader David Cameron for Prime Minister in the 2010 General Election. In January 2016, he also publicly called for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.

He is a fan of chill-out music and released a compilation CD called Cained in 2007 on the UMTV record label. He met Elton John and was discussing musical tastes, when Caine said that he had been creating chillout mix tapes as an amateur for years.

He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014).

He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).

The soundstage at Shepperton Studios, in which he filmed Batman Begins (2005), is also the one where he filmed his very first film, Hell in Korea (1956).

Has stated that the character of Vichy war criminal Pierre Brossard in The Statement (2003) was his least favorite. He said that all the other characters he played in his career, whether good or evil, had a sense of humor on some level that he would try to convey in his performance. He felt that Brossard had no sense of humor whatsoever, in part because the character was such an intense man.

Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.

2001: Was voted fifth in the Orange Film Survey of greatest British actors.

He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his contribution to the performing arts.

It was rumoured that he did not get along with Steven Seagal while filming On Deadly Ground (1994). He has stated that while they got on fine, but he hated filming in Alaska, even joking that "On Deadly Ground" was an apt title.

He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1992 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama.

For more than forty years, Caine's mother, Ellen Maria Burchell, paid periodic visits to a "cousin" in a mental hospital. When she died in 1989, Caine learned that the cousin was really his elder brother, David.

Ranked #55 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1987]

The production offices of Mona Lisa (1986) were located in the disused St. Olave's hospital, the very hospital in which Caine was born.

Educating Rita (1983) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed.

"Michael Caine", a top 10 song in Britain in the mid-1980s by the new wave group Madness, had his "My Name is Michael Caine" quote sampled into the song.

He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976).

Lobbied for the lead role in The Day of the Jackal (1973) but was rejected by director Fred Zinnemann, who felt that the character of The Jackal, who essentially is a cipher, should not be played by a movie star.

Turned down the role of Robert Rusk in Alfred Hitchcock's crime thriller Frenzy (1972). He thought the character was disgusting and said "I don't want to be associated with the part." After Caine declined the role he later mentioned in his memoirs how Hitchcock completely ignored him when they met in a hotel a few years later.

His first American accent was in the film Hurry Sundown (1967). He was taught the Southern drawl by Vivien Leigh, who told him to say "four door Ford" all day long for weeks. (source - "What's it all about?" Michael Caine's autobiography - 1992)

The title role in Alfie (1966) was turned down by Anthony Newley and Terence Stamp before it was offered to him.

Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude.

Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer.

He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent.

However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), The Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command. However, there were some gems amongst the dross.

In 1957, at Brighton University, Caine appeared in a one-act play written by a fellow actor who went by the name of David Baron. It was Baron's very first play. He later changed his name back to Harold Pinter, the name under which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen Frances Marie (Burchell), a charlady, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a fish-market porter. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".