The Elephant to Hollywood

Epilogue

So now I’m in the fortunate and luxurious position of only working when I want to. I don’t like having to get up early in the morning or spending a long time learning lines, so these days I only work with offers that I really can’t refuse. It’s very different from the way I used to be. From the age of twenty to the age of twenty-nine, I was obsessed with becoming an actor – and when I finally got to Hollywood, I could never quite believe that I had made it and so I kept on working for fear it would all disappear on me.

These days, I don’t think like that at all. I don’t see myself as a Hollywood movie star – in fact I don’t see myself as anything in particular. I’m aware that I have this image in the media and I have to confess that I quite like it, but of course I’m not allowed to take myself too seriously. I once tried it on Shakira. ‘I’m an icon,’ I said. ‘It says so in the paper.’ ‘You may be an icon,’ she said, ‘but you’d better take the rubbish out!’

Of course we still go back to Hollywood – it’s an incredibly important part of our lives and many of our friends still live there. But the links are loosening. I had thought it was all over in 1992, but it turned out that it wasn’t. Now, I think it probably is.

The first hint of this came during a visit to LA last year when we went to a restaurant on Little Santa Monica called Dolce Vita. It was Frank Sinatra’s favourite restaurant and as we walked in, I remembered the night long ago when he had first brought us there. As Shakira and I walked to our table, which was right across the room, the faces of friends of ours kept appearing out of the darkness to say hello. When we finally reached the table and sat down, I asked Shakira, ‘Did you notice anything special about the people who have just greeted us?’ ‘Well,’ she said, a bit puzzled, ‘they are all friends of ours…’ ‘I know that,’ I said, ‘but they were all women, and they are all widows.’ I could see at once that she understood: Barbara Sinatra, the widow of Frank, Veronique Peck, the widow of Gregory and Barbara Davis, the widow of our billionaire friend, Marvin.

This time, as soon as we arrived, Shakira and I went for a drive through Beverly Hills, for old time’s sake. As we drove around we pointed out to each other the houses of people we had known: Danny Kaye, Jimmy Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire among others. When we finally got back to the hotel, I had another question for her. ‘Did you notice anything about those houses we were looking at today?’ I asked. This time Shakira had the answer straight away. ‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘The people we knew who lived in them are all dead.’ Some sort of message was beginning to sink in for us.

The following day, while Shakira had lunch with girlfriends, I had lunch with my Hollywood press agent Jerry Pam at The Grill just off Rodeo Drive, one of my favourite haunts for over forty years. As we sat down, Jerry gave me the news I had been half expecting for some time: he was retiring and leaving Hollywood for good. He is a sprightly eighty-three, so this wasn’t exactly a shock, but given our experiences of the last few days, it was another sign that it was probably time finally to say goodbye to the place I loved so much. After lunch, Jerry and I got to the corner of Rodeo Drive, shook hands, said goodbye – and as I watched him disappear into the groups of Japanese tourists on his way to find his car, I knew it was over.

I didn’t hesitate. I went straight into Ermenegildo Zegna and bought myself a shirt. I always do that when I’m a bit depressed. Carrier bag in hand, I wandered back up Rodeo Drive as the memories flooded back. The history of my Hollywood was all around me. I passed the Daisy on my right, once the best discotheque in Beverly Hills, now a clothes shop. The jewellers’ on the corner had once been the home of Barbra Streisand’s hairdresser, Jon Peters, who became the boss of Columbia Pictures. On my left was the site of the Luau, the place to see and be seen by everyone who was anyone in Hollywood. It is now a shopping mall…

But by the time I’d got back to the hotel, I’d cheered up. So Hollywood was finally over after forty years? It had been great, but, I thought, that’s the past. I’m going home to my future, to my friends, my family, my home and garden – maybe to another film, if something interesting comes along, but in any case, to everything that really matters – and above all, to the newest and most exciting development in my life – my three grandchildren.

On 15 October 2008, our lives changed forever. I had been delighted by the news of Natasha’s pregnancy, and was looking forward to the baby’s arrival, but I had no idea of the depth of the love I would feel for my first grandchild. Natasha and her husband Michael named their son Taylor and gave him the middle names of Michael and Caine. ‘You never had a son, Dad,’ Natasha said, ‘and now you have one.’ It was a unique gift. What’s more, although both Natasha and Michael have black hair and brown eyes, Taylor has blond hair and blue eyes and people say he looks just like me. I think he is far, far better looking than I ever was and I have decided that I want to live for another fifty years so I can watch him grow up and grow old – as you can tell, I am completely besotted.

Just as Shakira and I were getting used to Taylor and the joy he brought to us, Natasha announced that she was pregnant again. September 2009 was the big month and we were very excited – only to have another surprise when she announced that she was having twins! We went into overdrive: a new bedroom was added, swings and slides adorned the lawn and the living room was turned into a nursery. Our house was a big place for just two people, but it is perfect for visits from our new family – some sixth sense must have been operating when we planned it all!

The twins, Miles and Allegra, were born on 23 September, which means for two weeks each year they and Taylor are the same age. They don’t look anything like each other: Miles is dark, with brown eyes, and Allegra is blonde with blue eyes. I remember Scarlett Johannsson introducing me to her twin, Hunter, and being astonished to find that while she is five foot four, with blue eyes and blonde hair, Hunter is six foot three and dark. Maybe our twins will be just the same…

The twins, though growing fast, are still babies; Taylor is rapidly becoming a little boy and I love having him just pottering around the room when I’m writing. He’s very good at noticing when I’m getting writer’s fatigue – which is about every twenty minutes – and he comes over to give me a rest by climbing on to my lap and switching on Mickey Mouse on my computer. It means so much to me to have these precious grandchildren who suddenly appeared in my seventy-fifth year over a period of just over eleven months, an unexpected late joy and one that I could never have imagined would mean so much. They are in my thoughts constantly. I’m planning ahead to Christmas already – the twins were too young to appreciate it last year, although I thought Taylor would enjoy all the lights and the decorations and pulled out all the stops. He loved it, it was worth everything just to see the look on his face when he came in to the room and saw the tree ablaze with lights and piled with presents. And I’m planning to move on from Miami again to avoid that nine-hour flight (not the best with three small children) and the wonderful, but scary, balcony seven storeys up…

So life moves on, and it is now a Monday morning at my home in Surrey as I sit writing this final chapter. Last weekend, the 14th of March, was my seventy-seventh birthday and it was such a special one. I had three grandchildren at my birthday for the first time in my life. It was a beautiful sunny day and we picked the first daffodils of spring and that, for me, is perfection.

I saw my London friends earlier in the week. We had a dinner at the Cipriani in Mayfair and, appropriately enough, several of the Mayfair Orphans were there to help me celebrate. Johnny Gold, nightclub owner extraordinaire, is now golfer-in-the-Bahamas ordinaire – but he’s very happy. Photographer Terry O’Neill is more successful than ever. Philip Kingsley, the trichologist, came along with his wife Joan, who is a psychiatrist (I’ve always thought what a great team they would be if going bald was driving you mad) and so did our occasional member Michael Winner, there to enjoy the food for once, not to criticise it. My daughters Dominique and Natasha were there, as well as Natasha’s husband Michael and Shakira’s friend Emile, whom she has known since their early days in Guyana. I was happy to see my old friend the South African hotel mogul Sol Kerzner, whom I first met filming Zulu, and his wife Heather, who shares a birthday with me, and – along with Michael Winner – representing the film world, the movie producer Norma Heyman, with whom I worked on The Honorary Consul. I always love Norma’s story about her son, David, who told her one day that he wanted to be a movie producer like her and had bought a little children’s story to start with. It was called Harry Potter… I love the movie business – you couldn’t make it up! The departed members of the Mayfair Orphans were represented by Chrissie Most, the widow of our Mickie. It was one of those evenings that we all knew would be good, but which because of the bond between us all, turned out to be truly special.

And then last Wednesday, I had the third part of my birthday celebrations. Sol Kerzner threw a party at the nightclub Annabel’s for Heather and as it was my birthday, too, I was part of the occasion. The first thrill for me was being able to get into the club without wearing a tie – something that would have been impossible when the founder, Mark Birley, was alive. The second was finding it was as full of beautiful, elegant people of all four sexes (maybe even as many as five or six – I haven’t been out much lately) as it ever was in my younger days. I didn’t recognise any of them, though, which was rather disturbing – although I could tell they were all very important. Shakira saw I was looking a bit puzzled and took pity on me. ‘They’re either from the fashion industry,’ she whispered, ‘or so rich we don’t know them!’ Well – that was a relief. And I was further relieved to find fellow Mayfair Orphan Johnny Gold among the crowd. I stuck to him like a limpet, because the music was so loud I couldn’t hear anyone introduce themselves. I really am getting old, I thought.

It was a spectacular evening with magnificent food and an incredible cabaret entertainment, including six beautiful dancers kicking high, up close and personal. Fortunately they were wearing very sensible knickers – the sort my mother had told me, when as a small boy I had shown an early interest, were made of something called blue winceyette. Sensible, and not in the least titillating. This was followed by the star cast of Jersey Boys and then the five of us who had birthdays to celebrate – Heather, me, Sir Philip Green of Topshop fame, Patrick Cox, the shoe designer, and Tracey Emin’s boyfriend, photographer Scott Douglas – were all called on stage and presented with chocolate birthday cakes iced with ‘love is all you need’.

Love wasn’t quite what was in the air everywhere, though – just as Heather was making a speech noting, ‘There’s so much love in the room tonight,’ down in the throng Hugh Grant had called PR man Matthew Freud a stupid c*** and Matthew had rubbed his slice of chocolate birthday cake all the way down the front of Hugh’s shirt. Hugh hit back with a punch to Matthew’s nose, which missed and caught him on the cheekbone. Matthew retaliated by throwing a glass of wine at Hugh, which missed him and soaked Johnny Gold instead. Matthew stormed out of the room clutching his cheek, waiters mysteriously appeared with a clean shirt for Hugh and the party turned into a disco and we danced the rest of the night away. Trust a PR man, though (or, rather, don’t trust a PR man) because Matthew Freud had the last word and emailed pictures of Hugh Grant’s chocolatey shirt to all his friends the next day.

So from a high-octane celebrity party to a small dinner with old friends and then – and happiest of all – to a day at home with three generations of my family – I have had a birthday I’ll always remember. It seems to me, too, as I sit here finishing this book, that my three birthday celebrations also reflect the distance I’ve travelled – from the Elephant all the way to Hollywood and back. It was a tough start, it’s had some low moments and it’s had incredible highs, but it’s been a rich and rewarding journey – and it’s not over yet!