The Elephant to Hollywood

10 The Best of the Best

Maybe it was because of the time it took me to make it in the movies, and maybe it was because of the contentment that the arrival of Shakira and Natasha brought to my life, but despite the fact that I had felt instantly at home in Beverly Hills and love Hollywood life, what matters to me is not and has never been the trappings of stardom. I’ve never existed in what I’ve always thought of as the ‘Hollywood bubble’ the way some of the really massive stars do. For people like Frank Sinatra, for instance, even though he became a great friend of mine, everything was on his terms. When you went with him, you went into his world. Frank, of course, was a law unto himself; with Frank there was no equal partnership. Wherever he went he was surrounded by a retinue to smooth his way. I remember one of his guys whispering to me when I turned up one time, ‘Frank’s in a great mood today!’ (You very definitely did not want him to be in a bad mood.) I said, ‘And what about me? What about my bad mood?’ And the guy said, ‘Who gives a shit? No one cares how you feel.’ Frank was always the Guv’nor.

But stardom comes in many guises and although Hollywood has its fair share of egos and Guv’nors one of the most challenging and remarkable superstars I ever worked with was Laurence Olivier. Sleuth is inextricably bound up with that first magical summer Shakira and I got together and it almost seemed as if I needed the time and the space that our life in the Mill House offered in such abundance to prepare myself psychologically for playing opposite the most celebrated actor in the world at that time. It was to prove an extraordinary experience.

I was nervous enough about the acting, but I was also nervous about something else, which sounds a bit ridiculous now: how to address Larry. It may seem a quaint and particularly English problem, but he was ‘Lord Olivier’ and I didn’t know whether or not I should use his title. Sleuth is a two-hander and it seemed absurd to have to address the only other actor on set as ‘My Lord’, but on the other hand I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. I needn’t have worried. Larry had enough imagination and grace to anticipate my concerns. He sent me a charming letter a few weeks before we began shooting. ‘It would be a great idea if you called me Larry.’

Once that immediate problem had been dealt with I was able to focus my worries on the thing that really mattered: the work. The first rehearsal was taking place at Pinewood and we were going to use the actual sets. As I sat in the car on the way to the studio I made a pact with myself: Larry Olivier may have been one of the greatest actors of all time, but I was not going to let myself be intimidated by him or his reputation. When I arrived I made my usual preparations. I didn’t want to over-familiarise myself with the set because in my first scene my character would be entering it as a stranger; on the other hand I didn’t want to go blundering about either. I took myself off quietly and just walked it through. Joe Mankiewicz, who was directing, watched me go through the motions and when I had finished he came over. ‘Don’t worry, Michael,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you.’ They were words I needed to hear just then.

At precisely ten o’clock, the great man arrived. Smaller – it’s true, they almost always are – than I expected, he made straight for me, hand outstretched. ‘Michael,’ he said. ‘We meet at last.’ He could not have been friendlier, but I felt far from at ease. After all, my co-star was not only a great stage actor: he was a great movie actor and had been a screen idol in the thirties and forties. I looked over at Joe and wondered how he was feeling. Larry was not only a great stage director: he was a great movie director, too… I wasn’t the only one who would need nerves of steel over the next few weeks.

The first thing I noticed about Larry was that he treated the first rehearsal – and every subsequent one – as if it were a performance. He was incredibly intense that first day and it was all I could do to stand up to the onslaught. But there was something bothering him and he left in a rush at the end, clearly frustrated. Joe and I were just packing up and chatting when Larry burst back in. ‘I’ve worked it out!’ he announced. We waited for more, but he knew the value of suspense all right. ‘You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow,’ he said airily and left.

Next morning he turned up and, with a triumphant and extravagant theatrical flourish, produced what looked like a small, hairy, black caterpillar from behind his back. He held it to his upper lip. Joe and I looked at each other. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think?’ ‘If you really think that’s necessary…’ began Joe warily. ‘I do!’ Larry insisted. ‘I really do!’ He leant forward as if to take us into his confidence. ‘I’ve discovered something.’ He paused for dramatic effect and took a deep breath. ‘I can’t act with my own face,’ he suddenly yelled. ‘I have to be disguised!’

It seemed to work. From then on rehearsals ran smoothly except for something very strange: Larry couldn’t remember his lines. It didn’t matter how short the scene was, or how few lines he had, he simply couldn’t do it. And this was a man whose last job had been on stage for three and a half hours every night in a Eugene O’Neill play. All became clear a few days later. Larry, the builder, the founder and the main driving force behind the establishment of the National Theatre, had been forced out of the project, just before the official opening. The side effects from the pills he had been taking to combat stress included memory loss.

Once Larry was off the tranquilisers, he was back to his old self – and it was a formidable self, a real force to be reckoned with. He was used to being the star of every show he was in and had no hesitation in placing himself centre-stage in every scene, which meant that I had to find a way to act around him. And whenever I had a line that cut across a move he wanted to do, he rather grandly ordered Joe to cut it. After this had gone on for a while I went to Joe to complain. ‘Don’t worry, Michael,’ he said. ‘I promised you I would look after you. This is a film, not the theatre and we have skilled camera operators and an editing suite. Trust me.’

I did – and got my confidence back, which was just as well as we were working up to the most difficult scene in the whole movie: Larry’s character puts a gun to my head and says he is going to shoot me and I have to break down and beg for mercy. In the end, it went well and as we were walking back to the dressing rooms, Larry came up and put his arm round me. ‘When we started this film,’ he said confidentially, ‘I thought of you as a talented assistant.’ He gave another one of his dramatic pauses. ‘But now I see you as a partner.’ I don’t think I have ever received a compliment that has meant more. On the last day of filming, he gave me a cherry tree for my garden. It came with a plaque that read, ‘To one right-thinking deceitful man from the other’. It reads oddly written down like that, but I think it sums up Larry’s attitude to the craft of acting – the putting on of the mask of character – perfectly.

Larry died in July 1989. His memorial service was held the following October in Westminster Abbey where his ashes were interred alongside those of the only other actor in the Abbey, Edmund Kean. With the sort of theatrical gesture that could almost have been devised by the man himself, actors who had been particularly associated with Olivier over the course of his life were asked to carry certain items that had meant something to him, to be buried with the urn. I was very honoured to be part of a roll call of some of the greatest actors of our times, including Peter O’Toole and Paul Scofield, and to be given the script Olivier had used for Henry V to carry. It was an extraordinary national occasion and one I will never forget – although I’ve often wondered if I shouldn’t also have slipped that little hairy black caterpillar of a moustache in among the pages…

Perhaps we are only now able to appreciate the incredible stream of acting talent that emerged from Britain during the middle years of the twentieth century. Some of these theatrical giants, like Olivier, moved from stage to screen (and back again); others began, in the time-honoured American way, as child stars. And of those, very few indeed survived such early exposure to become truly great.

Elizabeth Taylor is one of those few. To me, she epitomises the glamour of a Hollywood star. I once worked with her in Zee and Co in 1970, after I had moved into the Mill House but before I met Shakira. It was filmed at Shepperton Studios in England, and I very quickly got a sense of the awe with which she was regarded. Unlike the rest of us, who were expected to be on set at 8.30 in the morning, her contract stipulated that she didn’t have to show up until 10.00 – and we were given a running commentary on her journey: ‘She’s just left the hotel… the car’s pulling up outside… she’s in make-up… she’s in hair… she’s on her way!’ By the time she actually arrived on set, preceded by an army of minions, I was a bag of nerves. In fact I shouldn’t have worried – she was delightful, utterly professional and the only actor I’ve ever been on set with never to mess up a line.

Of course, because Elizabeth Taylor had been a star ever since she was a child, she was used to the star treatment, but she had a great sense of humour about it all – although I wouldn’t have dared tease her. Brian Hutton, the director of the film, had no such qualms. He’d heard from the older MGM staff, he told her, that unlike most child stars she was never a pain in the arse. Elizabeth graciously inclined her head to accept the compliment as was her due and said, ‘Thank you, Brian,’ in her most charming way. ‘So what I want to know,’ Brian went on, ‘is when did you become one?’ The set went very quiet while we waited for the explosion – but when it came it was an explosion of laughter. And after only a minute or two, we all joined in.

Many years ago, Richard Burton bought Elizabeth Taylor a diamond necklace for what was – at that time (well, at any time, really) – an extraordinary sum. Several years later I ran into her at a party and she was wearing it. She looked stunning and I was just telling her how beautiful I thought it was, when she suddenly pulled me towards her and whispered in my ear, ‘It’s not the real one – it’s paste!’ ‘Why don’t you wear the real one?’ I asked. ‘It’s too dangerous,’ she said, looking around her. I followed her gaze: all I could see was multi-millionaires. ‘Surely you’re safe here?’ I said, pointing at the two enormous bodyguards standing behind her chair trying to pretend they were part of the furniture. ‘Oh – them,’ she said. ‘They’re always here when I’m wearing this.’ I thought for a moment. ‘But surely you don’t need them if the necklace is paste?’ She looked at me pityingly. ‘If I didn’t have the guards, Michael,’ she explained as if to a small child, ‘everyone would know it was paste.’

Of course some of the truly great stars are very happy to remain discreetly behind their on-screen roles. Once I was waiting outside the Beverly Hills Hotel with Cary Grant. We had bumped into one other and were just chatting when a woman tourist suddenly noticed us and came over. She seemed very excited. ‘Michael Caine?’ she said breathlessly. ‘Is it really you? I’ve been in Hollywood two weeks and you’re the first movie star I’ve seen! I’m just leaving for the airport – this is my final day – and at last I see a real movie star!’ And she looked over at Cary Grant and she said to him, ‘You just never see stars in Hollywood, do you?’ And Cary Grant said, ‘No, ma’am, you don’t.’

As far as I’m concerned, one of the greatest stars I have worked with – one of the greatest stars I think the movie business has ever known – is Sidney Poitier. I had taken a part in The Marseilles Contract in the winter of 1973-4 mainly because it was being filmed in the south of France and I was keen to get Shakira and Natasha to a warmer climate. I managed that all right, but the film was not a success and when the opportunity to play opposite Sidney in the anti-apartheid movie The Wilby Conspiracy came up, I leapt at the chance. My experiences on the set of Zulu had made me an implacable opponent of the apartheid system and I was pleased to be able to make a contribution to highlighting its cruelty. And of course Sidney was, and still is, one of my closest friends. He was one of the first people I met when I arrived in LA. In fact he was there at the Gambit party Shirley Maclaine threw for me. We got on from the very start – but our friendship was cemented and deepened by our work together on The Wilby Conspiracy.

In the mid-seventies, apartheid in South Africa was in full force so for obvious reasons we had to shoot in Kenya. Sidney was already a massive star in Hollywood but in Kenya he was treated like a god, whereas absolutely no one seemed to know or care who I was. It began at the airport in Nairobi when I arrived with Shakira and baby Natasha and the man sent to meet us hurried straight past and headed for a short fat bald bloke. This was a strange sensation for me after several years of fame and although I tried to keep a sense of proportion and convince myself that it would be good to be able to walk down a street without being harassed by fans, the novelty did wear off after a bit.

Sidney, however, remained as cool as ever – although he did get very excited when he was invited to meet the president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. This was a great honour and Sidney was very proud of it. I was disappointed that no one had asked me to come along, but I pretended I didn’t care. He was flown to Nairobi for the great meeting and I waited around for him to come back from the visit. When he turned up, I asked casually, ‘How did it go?’ He looked at me for a minute and then he said, ‘The first question Jomo Kenyatta asked me was, “And what do you do, Mr Poitier?”’

Jomo Kenyatta may not have known who Sidney Poitier was but the staff at the Kenya Safari Club were well aware of the identity of their guest. I went there with Sidney a couple of times for dinner and I noticed that he always got much better food than the rest of us, no matter what we ordered. So I’m going to claim credit for one of the best lines in a comic movie ever, because at every dinner I had with Sidney, when the waiter said to me, ‘And what would you like, sir?’ I’d say – just like the customer in the diner when Meg Ryan is faking an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally – ‘I’ll have what he’s having!’

I fell in love with Africa, with its vast landscape and its people, all over again while making this film. But I thought I sensed something even more profound going on with Sidney. One afternoon we were shooting at a little private airfield near Mount Kenya. During a break in the filming, I was leaning up against an old hangar, smoking, and I looked up to see Sidney standing right at the end of the runway gazing at Mount Kenya, silhouetted against it, the very essence of an African. As he walked back towards me, I said to him, ‘Discovering your roots, Sidney?’ He smiled and paused for a minute and then said, ‘They don’t go through Gucci shoes, Michael.’ But I knew they had.

Sidney is, of course, a mould-breaker. Always an actor first, this hugely talented man has had a huge impact on the advancement of black people without ever making a big deal of it. But he’s funny with it. One evening, about ten years ago, we were both at the house of a mutual friend, Arnie Kopelson, the producer of, among other films, Platoon. As is usually the case when you go round to people’s houses in Beverly Hills, Arnie was showing a film, a comedy with an all-black cast, in his home cinema. Now all of us are comedians, one way or another, so nothing is taken very seriously, but we finished this film without a single laugh: it was dreadful. And we all turned to Sidney, who was the only black person in the room, and he said with a completely straight face, ‘This movie has put African Americans back exactly eleven months.’

Not only is Sidney a great friend and someone I see whenever I’m in LA, there are also a few big things in my life that he’s answerable for. One is for my partnership in the restaurant business with Peter Langan (more on him later) and the other is golf. Sidney Poitier is one of two reasons that I don’t play golf. He’s the kindest, gentlest person you’d ever wish to meet, but when he tried to teach me the game, I was so bad he nearly lost his temper with me – and I decided I’d better give up trying to learn for his sake. The other reason I don’t play golf is Sean Connery, but more on him later, too.

Although I had loved being in Kenya, after The Wilby Conspiracy I was keen to settle down in England for a while and so I took on a so-called art movie, The Romantic Englishwoman. This gave me exposure to yet another type of star – the politically active kind – in this case, Glenda Jackson. In fact the whole movie turned out to be rather a serious business – certainly compared with The Wilby Conspiracy, which had been about a serious business, but still managed to be fun at the same time. Joseph Losey, the director of The Romantic Englishwoman, was not a bundle of laughs, for a start. He had one of those very grim faces and didn’t crack a smile from the first day of shooting to the last. I pride myself on being able to make people laugh and bet one of the crew a tenner that I’d get one from Joe by the end of the film. I lost hands down.

In The Romantic Englishwoman I was playing (rather against type) a wimpy husband who lets his wife (Glenda) get up to all sorts with her insatiable lover, who was played by Helmut Berger. Glenda and I got on fine, and Helmut and I got on fine, but Glenda and Helmut didn’t get on at all fine and I found myself a whole new role as I played shuttle diplomacy between the two of them. Their love scenes in particular lacked conviction and I was determined to do better when it came to my turn. Love scenes are actually very hard to do in movies. For a start they are rarely romantic – both partners are usually wearing a sort of padded codpiece to prevent anything untoward and it’s hard not to get a bit embarrassed. Glenda, however, seemed in complete command – although she managed to unnerve me completely. We were all set up in bed and ready to go when she held up her hand to stop proceedings and rummaged under a pillow. She’d hidden a little screw of toilet paper there and, unwrapping it, she revealed a tiny false tooth, which she popped into her mouth to fill a gap. Somehow I just couldn’t summon the same passionate zeal after that…

It’s often difficult to explain the way that the movie world works. Theatrical legends like Olivier, icons like Frank Sinatra, glamorous Hollywood stars like Elizabeth Taylor, mould-breaking stars like Sidney Poitier, these were the people I worked with and the people we hung out with. But even in a world where the rich and famous can get together on a regular and casual basis it is still possible to be taken aback by who you could bump into – and this is what happened to me in Paris, in the autumn of 1974.

Shakira and I were on a mini-honeymoon, staying at the Hotel Georges Cinq. We’d had a wonderful long weekend and were just sitting up in bed with our first cup of coffee of the morning discussing how we’d spend the day when the phone went. ‘Michael Caine?’ The voice seemed unmistakeable, but even so I couldn’t quite believe it. Was it one of my friends taking the mickey? ‘Yes?’ I said cautiously. ‘It’s John Huston here.’ I nearly dropped the phone. He was very easy to imitate – I always thought if you ever heard God talk he would sound just like John Huston – but this really was John Huston! I shook myself. ‘Michael? Are you still there? I’m in the bar next door – can you spare me a few minutes?’ It took me just eight to get shaved, washed and dressed and round the corner to meet the director above all directors I most admired, the man who had directed my hero Humphrey Bogart in six of his greatest films, the man I regarded as the greatest all-round movie talent of our time.

The greatest all-round movie talent of our time was sitting at the bar nursing a large vodka when I walked in. When my own drink arrived I downed a large slug of it without flinching and he nodded approvingly. ‘For twenty years,’ he began, ‘I’ve been trying to make a movie based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling called ‘‘The Man Who Would Be King’’. I had it all set up. In fact,’ he paused and looked me in the eye, ‘the two stars I had lined up were sitting right where you are now.’ It would have been cooler to say nothing but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Who were they?’ I asked. ‘Gable and Bogart,’ said John Huston. I drew in my breath. There was a dramatic pause. ‘And then they both went and died on me.’ There was another long pause while he looked down mistily into his glass and I tried to work out what all this meant. At last he looked up again. ‘But I’ve got the backing now and I want you to play Peachy Carnehan.’ I hardly dared to ask, but went ahead anyway. ‘Which part was Bogart going to play?’ I blurted out. ‘Peachy,’ said John. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘Without reading the script?’ he asked, raising one of those bushy eyebrows. I had to admit it looked a bit eager. I tried to calm down and be sensible. ‘And the Gable character?’ I asked. ‘He’s called Daniel Dravot,’ said John, ‘and he’s Peachy’s best friend.’ I sincerely hoped it would be someone that could be my best friend. This time it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Sean Connery,’ he said. There was nothing more to be said.

Peachy and Danny were two sergeants with the British Army in India who go AWOL in an attempt to become kings of the ancient – and fabulously rich – kingdom of Kafiristan. We were shooting the movie on location in Morocco and our ancient and fabulously rich kingdom was the Mamounia, a magnificent old hotel in Marrakesh. It was a wonderful place to base ourselves and although we had to get used to the rather slow pace of service in North Africa in those days, it was a haven for our team. I have very happy memories of the shoot. As well as Sean, I was working with Christopher Plummer to whose Hamlet I had played Horatio in my one and only venture into Shakespeare just before Zulu came out and the camera crew, sound technicians and one of the assistant directors were also old friends. In John Foreman as producer, too, we had a man who shared John Huston’s vision for the movie – which is not always the case – and so the team was a joy to work with from the top down.

For me, as ever, one of the great pleasures was having Shakira along on the shoot. In fact it turned out that it was just as well she had joined me. On the night before we began, John Huston told us the news that the girl due to play the part of Roxanne, the beautiful Arabian princess, had dropped out at the last minute. He seemed to be casting his eyes around the room rather helplessly looking for inspiration, but I couldn’t help noticing that his gaze kept returning to my beautiful wife. Shakira had noticed it, too. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’ John shrugged and smiled enigmatically. ‘Of course not, honey,’ he said smoothly.

I spent most of the night trying to persuade Shakira to have a go, but she was adamant and eventually I gave up. I didn’t blame her – it was not what she had signed up for and I could understand her reluctance. She turned up loyally on set, though, to watch us start shooting and I saw John go over to where she was standing, during a break. After just a moment she started smiling, after a few more minutes she was actually laughing and just before we began shooting again John announced that Shakira had agreed to play the part of Princess Roxanne. I’ve never managed to find out what he said, but I’d like to know!

Shakira was very nervous about stepping in to the role at such short notice and with so little experience, but John was a brilliant director who inspired confidence in all of us. I was probably more nervous than Shakira was herself and John eventually told me to make myself scarce during her scenes unless I was actually in them, because I was not helping matters. In the end she played her part magnificently – including a very difficult scene in which she had to go into a strange sort of fit or trance, something which would have been hard enough for a very experienced actress let alone a beginner.

In The Man Who Would Be King, John Huston lived up to every inch of his reputation as a great director. Throughout the making of the movie he addressed Sean and me as ‘Danny’ and ‘Peachy’, even off set, and he was somehow able to convey with the minimum of fuss or explanation exactly what he was looking for in a character. He didn’t tell you much, he just watched you very closely and you knew you were doing it right just by looking at him. He held the view – rare among directors – that good actors know what they are doing and should be left alone to do it if at all possible. I said to him once, ‘You don’t really tell us much, do you?’ And he said, ‘Two things, Michael. The art of good direction is casting. If you cast it right you don’t have to tell the actors what to do. Also,’ he went on, ‘you’re being paid a lot of money to do this, Michael. You should be able to get it right on your own – you don’t need me to tell you what to do!’ He only ever stopped me once mid-take, when I had to tell Christopher Plummer (who was playing Rudyard Kipling), what Danny and I were up to. Kipling warns us that what we were planning was very dangerous and Peachy replies, ‘We are not little men.’ I put the emphasis on the word ‘not’, but John held up his hand. ‘We are not little men,’ he said. I shrugged and did it his way and when we finished the take I saw he was smiling. He was right. We were not little men – under Huston’s direction we became giants.

Working with Sean was another great pleasure. He is one of the most generous and unselfish actors I have ever worked with and because we trusted each other – and because John trusted both of us – it meant that we could risk some improvisation and experiment, which I think paid off in the finished film. Off the set, Sean and I were not seeing as much of each other as you might have thought. He was a fanatical golfer – he’d had to learn the game for the James Bond movie Goldfinger where there’s a scene in which James Bond and the arch-villain Goldfinger have to play golf with each other – and he was spending most of his spare time on the links. Trying to take an interest in my friend’s all-consuming hobby, I asked him what playing golf on a Moroccan golf course was like and he told me that if you lost your ball in the lake you couldn’t get it back because the crocodiles would have it. I could just see Sean working himself up over losing that ball so I didn’t enquire further… I was a bit puzzled as to why he seemed quite so obsessed with the game but after a while I found out why. He had met a beautiful French woman on the course, someone who shared his passion for the game… Michelene went on to become his second wife.

As I’ve mentioned before, Sean Connery is the second reason I don’t play golf. Unlike my other golfing friend Sidney Poitier, Sean is not the kindest, gentlest person in the world and my lack of grasp of the sport would not make him sad as it did Sidney, it would just make him angry. In fact, Sean has a terrible temper and when he tried to teach me golf he was so incensed by my performance, he grabbed my club and broke it in two. I have never played golf since and I never will because I do not want to upset two of my best friends.

Sean lives full time in Nassau these days, but we stay in touch regularly. The last time we met we had dinner in London and had a great time reminiscing about the old days, the struggles we’d had, meeting each other in the dole queue… We had the same old laughs – he’s a very funny guy – and I reminded him about how tough he’d been on the way up. I thought I was quite tough but I was never anywhere near as tough as Sean was. There was one time in the early sixties, when we were in a London club together and it was amateur night and people were standing up to sing. They weren’t very good, but they were only kids trying their best. There was a group of drunks behind us and they started taking the piss out of the kids and Sean spoke to them a couple of times politely, asking, ‘Will you give the kids a chance? They’re trying to make their way in life.’ Finally Sean had had enough and he got up, said, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ and knocked all four of them out. I didn’t even leave the chair. I tell you, you wouldn’t mess with Sean unless you were very silly.

The relationship that developed between the two Johns, Chris Plummer, Sean and me made for a very special atmosphere on set. This was just as well, because The Man Who Would Be King was a hard picture to make. I had picked up terrible diarrhoea and had to play most of my scenes with half an eye on the location of the portable toilets – not that they offered much of a refuge. I remember rushing over to them once, desperate, and being knocked back by the unbelievable stench and the cloud of flies. The attendant, who was reading the paper, apparently oblivious, had forgotten the disinfectant. I bawled him out for this, but he just shrugged. ‘Come back at lunchtime,’ he suggested. ‘The flies will have moved on to the kitchen by then.’ You couldn’t fault the logic…

Chronic diarrhoea and – for me – a mild but frightening typhoid attack from breathing in filthy dust and dried camel dung were unpleasant enough, but neither Sean nor I were ever in real physical danger. The closest Sean got to it was shooting the last scene of the film, where his character is executed by being forced to stand on a rope bridge above a ravine before the ropes are cut and he plunges to his death. The bridge was built specially, but it seemed to both of us to be swaying in the breeze in a rather too convincing manner. I couldn’t manage more than a few steps, but Sean had to go right out into the middle. ‘It’s leaning to the right,’ he said to John Huston. ‘It wasn’t doing that yesterday.’ ‘Ah – that’s because yesterday you didn’t have to walk on it and today you do,’ said John. ‘You’re looking at it from a different point of view.’ I could see Sean weighing this up, but there was no way he wouldn’t accept the challenge and he turned round and walked straight out to the middle of the bridge. His character has to sing as the ropes are cut and Sean sang at the top of his voice, with not a wobble in it, as the fake ropes were cut – but there was no mistaking his relief when he got back to solid ground.

The real hero then took his place. Joe Powell was an experienced stuntman and the bottom of the ravine had been filled with foam and mattresses, but it was a genuine heart-in-the-mouth moment when the axes fell on the real ropes and he leapt off the bridge. It was windy and I’ve never forgotten looking down at those mattresses, which seemed to present a very small landing target all those hundreds of feet below. Joe fell so skillfully, twisting and turning on the way down to avoid all the sharp rocks, countering the pull of the wind as he went, and at the very last minute straightening himself out so that he hit the mattresses dead centre. There was a gasp of relief all round and then cheers as he got up uninjured, and John Huston turned to me and said, ‘That’s the darnedest stunt I’ve ever seen.’

I adored John Huston. He was like a father figure to me, a director who was very gentle with actors because he loved being one himself. Men like John have an aura about them that you can sense from a mile away. You could call it charisma or you could call it star quality, but whatever it is, it commands attention and respect. In a very different and rather less reassuring way, one of the other Hollywood greats whom I got to know well and who had this in spades was, of course, Frank Sinatra. We first met at the Gambit party, but we got to know each other better when I started dating his daughter Nancy, shortly afterwards, and he took us on a memorable weekend trip to hear him sing with Count Basie in Las Vegas.

Nancy and I flew to Las Vegas with Frank in his private plane and I sat next to him on the flight quite unable to believe that I was there next to my idol. He noticed that I seemed a bit on edge and asked me what was wrong and I told him and he laughed. When he first came to Hollywood, he said, he was equally struck dumb when he found himself sitting next to Ronald Colman. ‘Relax!’ Frank said to me. ‘We’re all the same. We live, love and die.’ And then he told me his motto, which was: ‘Live every day as though it’s your last – because one day it will be.’

When we got to our hotel, however, I realised that Frank wasn’t quite the easy-going guy he sometimes seemed. The Sands Hotel consisted of a squat square block with a tall tower next to it and I was booked into a suite in the square block. As I was going along the corridor I bumped into Frank. ‘Where’s Nancy’s room?’ I asked, without thinking. He smiled and led me to a window. ‘Up there,’ he said, pointing to the very top of the tower. He then opened the door of the suite next to mine and said, ‘And you’re down here with me.’

My intentions were entirely honourable as far as Nancy was concerned, in fact, but I was a bit worried because I was aware that Frank might well consider that I already had form… When I first arrived in Hollywood, Frank had just charged his friend, the scriptwriter Harry Kurnitz, with keeping an eye on Mia Farrow (Frank and Mia were about to get married). Harry became one of my mates and he, Mia and I all went out together in a gang with Steve Brandt. We were very effective at keeping Mia away from trouble until one evening we went to a film premiere together and the four of us were photographed in a row holding hands and smiling. Innocent stuff – until I opened the papers the next day and saw the same picture, but with Harry and Steve cut off the end and the caption, ‘Mia with new beau Michael Caine’. It was a nasty moment: I was only too aware that it wasn’t a good idea to get on the wrong side of Frank. Luckily Harry was there to put in a good word for me and disaster was avoided.

Over the years I became good friends with Frank and, later, Shakira and I would enjoy spending time with him and his wife Barbara. I’ve often wondered why Frank liked me, but I think it was because he thought I was funny – and he liked to laugh. He also liked my accent and he used to say to the people around him, ‘Did you hear that? Good morning? Did you hear the way he said that?’ And he always had this thing that I made too many movies. Every time we met he’d say, ‘How many movies you make today?’ and I’d say,’ Only one, Frank, only one.’ I think Frank also found me a bit unusual. He didn’t suffer fools and I think he respected the fact that I didn’t defer to him. He was very generous about my acting, too. He loved Alfie, in particular. It wasn’t surprising, I guess – he was Alfie and then some! I think there was also a connection between us because of our backgrounds: he was a slum kid and I was a slum kid. He liked the fact that I wasn’t a toffee-nosed Englishman. And then there was his affection for London. He told me about the time his career was in the doldrums and how he’d just finished From Here to Eternity and they asked him to go to the Columbia offices in Wardour Street to see the finished movie. ‘And from the moment I saw it,’ he said, ‘I knew that there I was, in London, and I was on my way back. And, Michael, I always remember it was in London.’

I was in England when Frank died in 1998. Of course the surprise wasn’t that he’d died, but that he lived so long. He smoked like a chimney, which was unusual for a singer, and he was a heavy drinker. On one of the last occasions we met, it was at a dinner he gave in Palm Springs. I was standing near the bar about to place an order when Frank came over. He put his hand on my elbow. ‘You’re not going to order a Perrier, are you, Michael?’ he said with only the faintest hint of menace. ‘No, Frank,’ I said, hastily changing my mind. ‘Vodka and tonic.’

Hollywood was different back then. It seems to me that perhaps the stars of today are not the big characters I used to know and work with. I’ve just watched the Academy Awards and all the people nominated seemed to be very small young men who had just been in a vampire film. They were all dark looking and a bit pale – as I guess you would be – and I’m not sure that among them I can identify the new De Niro, Pacino or Hoffman. There’s the physical thing, too: they really do seem to be getting smaller. Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole and I are all over six foot: Tom Cruise is short and so is Jude Law. Bogart was small, but then he made it work for him by getting all the parts George Raft didn’t want to do.

I suspect one of the reasons the old star system worked was because there was no TV at the time and when those big stars were up there on the huge screen they seemed much more remote than they are now when they are beamed directly into our sitting rooms. These days there’s complete fluidity between movies and television and it’s possible to switch between the two seamlessly. Alec Baldwin, for instance, who almost became a great film star and then suddenly he made a success of 30 Rock and his movie career took off again. Tina Fey – to me, she’s the funniest girl in the business and she makes me laugh just to look at her – began in TV and has now moved into movies. Of course, it can work the other way round – Lucille Ball started off as a movie star but the peak of her career was in television.

Stars of the magnitude of Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh – and male stars like Cary Grant, Robert Redford, Paul Newman or Clint Eastwood – have always been careful about the roles they chose. I took a different view. Between Gambit in the late Sixties and what I thought was going to be my retirement from the movie business in 1992, I was in well over seventy films. I always took a pragmatic view: if a movie came along and I liked the look of it and I needed the work, I did it. I had no concerns about letting down my fans by playing a particular role. I am an actor and I work for a living. And I think it’s why, when the time came to morph from movie star to leading actor that – once I’d got used to the idea – I was able to do so. I have always kept the example of Sir John Gielgud in my mind, too – a wonderfully gifted actor who kept working right until the end of his life. His agent told me that even aged ninety-two, Gielgud was still ringing to ask, ‘Are there any scripts this week? Is there any work?’ And he famously sacked an agent when he was ninety-six for not getting him a part in the TV adaptation of David Copperfield. We worked together on one of my more obscure works, The Whistle Blower, which was released in 1987, and I always found him eccentric, charming and very funny. Like me, he developed a useful line in butlers (he won an Oscar as Dudley Moore’s butler in Arthur), although his butler was very different indeed from the one I would go on to play in the Batman movies.

Stars from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood were much more remote than stars are nowadays where there is much more of a movie community, and actors are no longer stuck in ivory towers. Early Hollywood was rather like a closed order, often as a means of protecting handsome men and women who couldn’t necessarily act – and indeed might be gay, as was the case with actors like Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift. The contract system meant that the studios had complete control over their players’ public image, whereas the actors control that for themselves now. There were also no celebrity magazines picking over the bones of stars’ lives. The legendary Hollywood gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons could certainly make or break careers, but they knew if they went too far, the studios would ensure they would never get to talk to one of their stars again. It wasn’t really until Confidential magazine came along in the early fifties that the era of deference ended, although the emergence of the paparazzi and their new cameras with long lenses finished it off completely. Tangling with the celebrity magazines and the paparazzi with their endless appetite for gossip can be a very dangerous thing – I’ve never wanted or needed to do it – but actors on the way up often think they can manipulate them, although they almost always end up regretting it. But then for many of the bottom-feeders it’s the only thing they can do; big stars always manage to keep themselves aloof.