Digital Spy

URL	digitalspy.co.uk
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Entertainment, media, news
Available language(s)	English
Owner	Nat Mags
Created by	Digital Spy Ltd
Alexa rank	2,376 (June 2012[update])[1]
Current status	Online

Digital Spy is a British entertainment and media news website. According to Alexa Internet traffic statistics, as of February 2012, Digital Spy is the 104th most popular website in the United Kingdom,^[2] with an overall Alexa ranking of 2,173.^[1]

On 9 April 2008 it was announced that the website was purchased earlier in the month by magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi UK, a subsidiary of the Lagardère Group^[3] for a "significant" sum.^[4] On 1 August 2011, ownership of Hachette UK was sold to Hearst Magazines UK.^[5] The site also features forums which went live in March 2000. Representatives of several major companies including Top Up TV, Joost, Sky, Goodmans and Amstrad CEO Sir Alan Sugar^[4][6] are registered members that have posted on the forum.

The first annual Digital Spy Soap Awards, honoring soap opera performers and creators, were launched at the end of 2007.^[7][8][9] The 2007 Awards were announced on 21 March 2008.^[10]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Digital Spy UK
• Digital Spy USA
• Digital Spy Forums

Christopher Nolan
Nolan at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Born	Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (1970-07-30) 30 July 1970 (age 41) London, United Kingdom
Residence	Los Angeles, California, U.S. Highgate, London, UK
Other names	Chris Nolan
Citizenship	United Kingdom United States of America
Education	B.A. in Eng. Lit.
Alma mater	Haileybury and Imperial Service College, University College London
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1985–present
Style	Neo-noir, Nonlinear, psychological[1]
Influenced by	Ridley Scott, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Sergio Leone, John Carpenter, Terrence Malick, Nicolas Roeg
Home town	London, England, Chicago, Illinois
Board member of	Syncopy Films
Spouse	Emma Thomas (1997–present)
Children	4
Family	Jonathan Nolan (brother), Matthew Francis Nolan (brother)[2]
Awards	See here

Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (/ˈnoʊlən/; born 30 July 1970), also known as Chris Nolan is a British/American^[3] film director, screenwriter and producer.

He received serious notice after his second feature Memento (2000), which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him, including the Batman series and The Prestige. He also first collaborated with Wally Pfister, who would photograph all his subsequent films. After directing Insomnia (2002), Nolan pitched an idea for a reboot of the Batman film franchise to Warner Bros., eventually making a successful trilogy consisting of Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

Inception (2010) was an original screenplay by Nolan, a heist film set in the world of "shared dreaming." Nolan co-founded Syncopy Films with his wife, Emma Thomas, and they have produced all his films since The Prestige (2006).

Nolan has also worked with screenwriter David S. Goyer, film editor Lee Smith, composers David Julyan and Hans Zimmer, special effects coordinator Chris Corbould, and actors Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy, Jeremy Theobald, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, and Michael Caine.

Nolan spent his childhood in the United States and England, and later studied English literature at University College London, which he chose specifically for its film-making facilities. There he made a series of short films in the college film society, and met the friends with whom he would later make Following (1998), his independent début feature.

Early life[link]

Nolan was born in London, the son of an Englishman, who worked as an advertising copywriter, and an American mother, a flight attendant.^[4][5] He has a younger brother, Jonathan, with whom he often collaborates on film scripts. As a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States,^[6] he spent his childhood in both London and Chicago.^[7] Nolan found an interest in botany and "dicots" early on, until he found his father's camera. He began film-making at the age of seven using his father's Super 8 camera and his toy action figures.^[8] While living in Chicago as a child, he also made short films with Roko Belic, who would become a director and producer in his own right.

Nolan was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, an independent school on Hertford Heath in Hertfordshire, England, and later read English literature at University College London. Nolan chose UCL specifically for its film-making facilities, which consisted of a "Steenbeck editing suite (real film, real spools) plus a couple of 16mm cameras".^[9] Nolan was president of the college film society from 1992 to 1994; a contemporary described him as talented and focused on learning as much as possible about the mechanics and technology of film-making.^[9] Nolan graduated from UCL in 1993, but continued to associate with the film society, friends from there would later be involved in Following. Meanwhile he earned a living by producing corporate training videos. In 1997, Nolan married Emma Thomas, his college girlfriend and long-time film producer. They have four children.^[10]

Short films[link]

Tarantella (1989) was shown on Image Union, an independent film and video showcase on the Public Broadcasting Service.

Larceny (1996) was a short film by Nolan which contained traits later to be seen in his first feature, Following. Jeremy Theobald also appeared in Larceny, a short film shot by Nolan while in the UCLU Film Society. Theobald stated "Still, it was clear Chris was different. We met through friends because he’d heard that I was interested in making films. He gave me a script for Larceny, a short that he proposed to make in black-and-white with a restricted cast, crew and equipment in the space of a weekend. It was different from any other script I’d read at college. They were often art pieces that would explore the slamming of train doors on Euston station (in the days when trains had doors that you could slam). This script was sharp, irreverent and clever. Larceny worked well and I thought as a first foray into film acting, I did okay."^[11] Larceny was funded by Nolan himself, but shot using the Society's equipment. It is considered to be one of the best shorts produced by the Society in recent generations. Filmed in black and white on an Arri 16BL, it contains some superb hand-held camera work, and a fast-paced, gripping story.^[12]

Doodlebug (1997) is a three minute film about a man chasing an insect with a shoe around a grotty flat, only to discover on killing it that it is a miniature of himself: seconds after he himself is crushed by a larger version of himself. Nolan wrote, directed, co-produced, photographed, and edited the film. Jeremy Theobald was listed as "the man" in the credits; he would later play the protagonist in Following (1998), Nolan's first feature.

Features[link]

[edit] Following

Nolan directed his first feature film, Following, in 1998. The film depicts a writer who is obsessed with following random people. Scenes are shown out of chronological order. Nolan made the film on a budget of only $6,000.^[13] He shot it on weekends, over the course of a year, working with friends he had met at the University College London film society.^[14] To conserve expensive film stock, every scene in the film was rehearsed extensively to ensure that the first or second take could be used in the final edit. Nolan directed the film from his own script, and also photographed and edited it himself.^[14] It began to receive notice after a screening at the 1998 San Francisco Film Festival, and was eventually distributed on a limited basis by Zeitgeist in 1999.

[edit] Memento and Insomnia

Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan answer questions about Inception (2010). The husband and wife team founded Syncopy Films; she has worked as a producer on all of Nolan's pictures.

As a result of the film's success, Newmarket Films optioned the script for Nolan's next film, Memento. Memento (2000) is a critically acclaimed cult film,^[15] and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award (Oscar) for best screenplay. The movie is based on the short story Memento Mori, written by Christopher's brother, Jonathan Nolan. It follows widower Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce) who suffers a head injury and is unable to form new memories. In keeping with this inability to know what has just happened before, the film's narrative structure runs in reverse (with an interlude between each pair of major "flashback" sequences). At the Sundance Film Festival in 1999, Nolan met Wally Pfister, after being impressed by his work on The Hi-Line (1999). They shot about a quarter of Memento in black and white, and elsewhere used colors, light and darkness to emphasize the noir nature of the story.^[16]

In 2002, Nolan directed Insomnia, an American remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, albeit with major changes in both the plot and the nature of the main character. The plot of Insomnia revolves around two Los Angeles homicide detectives that are dispatched to a small town in Alaska, where the sun does not set, to investigate the methodical murder of a local teenager. The never setting sun was a central reference point in the story, and indeed the title, and while filming in Alaska during the summer months, Nolan and Pfister opted for a natural look to evoke the landscape, and played with putting the actors in darkness or light, for instance, they asked the production designer to position the detective's bed in a certain way in relation to the window. This allowed them to move his face in and out of shadows. Pfister recounted one shot of Al Pacino, when his character was struggling with his guilt as local policemen came looking for him. Pfister explained to the actor in the darkness he would catch the "ambient bounce", but the light was eight stops over-exposed. He recalled, "I said, when you’re in the shadows, you’ll be catching the ambient bounce. If you move forward, you’ll be in this nuclear, bright melting light. He knew exactly how to play it."^[16]

[edit] Batman trilogy

In 1997, Warner Bros. put its Batman film franchise on an indefinite hiatus when the fourth installment, Batman & Robin, was released to negative reviews and disappointing box office reception. In 2003, Nolan, together with David S. Goyer, who had written Blade (1998) convinced Warner Bros. to entrust the first of a revived Batman film series to a relatively unknown director. Batman Begins was released on June 15, 2005 and became a box office hit, ranking as the eighth highest grossing film of 2005 in the United States and the ninth highest grossing worldwide. It received a very positive critical and public reception, with many ranking it as superior to Tim Burton's Batman (1989); for instance Rotten Tomatoes' wide panel gave it an 85% rating compared to 71% for Burton's film.^[17][18] Strengths of the movie included its dark and intelligent storyline, strong emphasis on character, and the predominant themes of fear and duality. At the 32nd annual Saturn Awards, Batman Begins won "Best Fantasy Film", "Best Actor" for Christian Bale, and "Best Writing" for Nolan and Goyer. The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

In late July 2006, a sequel was officially confirmed as The Dark Knight with Nolan again directing, and Heath Ledger cast as The Joker, Batman's arch-enemy.^[19] Nolan and his brother Jonathan wrote a script, based on a treatment written by himself and David S. Goyer. The film began production in early 2007 and was released on July 16, 2008 in Australia and July 18, 2008 in the United States, to overwhelming critical acclaim: some critics calling it the greatest comic-book based movie ever made.^[20] It also had enormous box office success, setting the record for the highest-grossing weekend opening in the U.S., over $158 million, and as of October 2011 becoming the 3rd highest earning film of all time in the United States (it was the second at the time), and the sixth-highest worldwide at the time.^[21] At the 2009 Golden Globe Awards, Christopher Nolan accepted the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture on behalf of the deceased Ledger. Nolan was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Director for The Dark Knight. At the 81st Academy Awards, it was nominated for a total of eight Oscars, and won two, the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, and a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Ledger.

Nolan is currently doing post-production on The Dark Knight Rises, a sequel to The Dark Knight and said it will be his last Batman movie and a conclusion to the story: "Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story. And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story... I'm very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we’ve done with the characters. My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these things don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we're telling. And it hearkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories."^[22][23] Warner Bros. announced the film is scheduled to be released July 20, 2012.

[edit] The Prestige

The Prestige, released on October 20, 2006, is an adaptation of the Christopher Priest novel about two rival magicians in the 19th century. It reunites Nolan with Batman Begins stars Christian Bale and Michael Caine, with Hugh Jackman playing the other lead role. The movie had a mostly positive response from critics and made over $109 million worldwide.^[24] The film was co-written with his brother, Jonathan Nolan and co-produced with his wife, Emma Thomas. The film revolves around the intense professional rivalry between two stage illusionists, their desire to develop better tricks than the other draws them into a battle of skill and technology, dominated by obsession, secrecy and duality. Like the novel before it, the film has aspects of meta-fiction and makes use of flash-back to tell parts of the story. Its title refers to the final part of a stage performance, where the performer attempts to return a vanished object before the eyes of the audience. (This usage of "prestige" is an archaic meaning that was revived by Priest for use in the book.^[25])

[edit] Inception

After the success of The Dark Knight (2008), Warner Bros. contracted Nolan to a seven-figure deal to direct Inception (2010). Nolan wrote and directed the film which was described as "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind".^[26] Filming began in summer 2009, and Inception was released on July 16, 2010 to largely positive reviews and became a box office hit.^[27]

Writing in Senses of Cinema, Ian Allen Paul placed Inception within a trend in modern American film which treats themes of simulation and "meta-reality".^[28] Exploration of the subjectivity of experience, and questioning the reality of the material world had been explored in the preceding decade in The Matrix (1999), eXistenZ (1999), in Paprika (2006 film) and Charlie Kaufman’s Baudrillard-inspired Synecdoche, New York (2008), and have existed long before in Western philosophy and post-modernism. Nolan's framework in Inception is lightly different to other films: characters sedate themselves, connect to a machine and can inhabit a shared dream space built by one of them, "the architect". The world is constantly evolving as each character's movements affects the shared environment.^[28]

During post-production on Inception, Nolan gave an interview for These Amazing Shadows, a documentary spotlighting film appreciation and preservation by the National Film Registry. He agreed to do the interview after speaking with Doug Blush, the producer, at a piano recital featuring his son and Blush's daughter.^[29]

[edit] Man of Steel

On March 10, 2010, Nolan confirmed that he and David Goyer have been working on an idea for a Superman film. Nolan says, "He basically told me, 'I have this thought about how you would approach Superman.' I immediately got it, loved it and thought: That is a way of approaching the story I’ve never seen before that makes it incredibly exciting. I wanted to get Emma and I involved in shepherding the project right away and getting it to the studio and getting it going in an exciting way… A lot of people have approached Superman in a lot of different ways. I only know the way that has worked for us that’s what I know how to do." Although Zack Snyder is directing,^[30] Nolan will have significant creative input in the process.^[22]

Future projects[link]

[edit] Mr. Hughes

Originally scheduled for production in 2004, Nolan's film about Howard Hughes was delayed due to the release of Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004); Nolan feels that making it ten years after The Aviator would be more suitable as people would have forgotten about Scorsese's rendition. Nolan described the screenplay as being "The best thing I ever wrote...it's going to be a very, very unusual script and a very unusual movie."^[31] He described how the film will focus on Hughes's later life which was not covered in depth in Scorsese's film, "We’ll meet the Howard Hughes who spent much of 1948 sitting naked in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel with only a pink dinner napkin covering his genitals as he screened movies from his studio, RKO Pictures, and ran up an $11 million tab; the Hughes who — obsessed with food safety — once bought every franchise restaurant chain in his home state of Texas, and who was similarly so concerned about air quality that he installed an aircraft filtration system in his 1954 Chrysler New Yorker, taking up its entire trunk; the Howard Hughes who had his hair cut and nails trimmed only once a year, and who was seemingly as addicted to Baskin Robbins Banana Ripple ice cream as he was to regular codeine injections; the Hughes who at the end of his life considered only Mormons trustworthy enough to be let into his inner circle."^[32][33] The script would be based on Citizen Hughes: The Power, the Money and the Madness, a biography of the industrialist by Michael Drosnin.

[edit] The Keys To The Street

Gemma Arterton showed interest in starring in The Keys to the Street, based on a Ruth Rendell novel that was adapted by Nolan. Christopher Nolan had adapted the book into a screenplay which he originally planned to direct for Fox Searchlight, but moved on to make Batman Begins at Warner Bros instead. The film has since been deemed dead until interest recently re-appeared for it. It is unknown whether Nolan will direct the script though he has said that he probably would not given similarities between it and his previous films.^[34] The project is currently "in development" and not planned for production.

Recurring collaborators[link]

• Nolan often casts the same actors in different films. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Jeremy Theobald, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe and Larry Holden are among his more frequent acting collaborators.
• Nolan's wife Emma Thomas has produced most of his films, with the exception of Memento.
• Lee Smith has been Nolan's editor since Batman Begins, with Dody Dorn editing Memento and Insomnia.
• Wally Pfister has served as cinematographer for all of Nolan's films starting with Memento.
• David Julyan composed music for Following, Memento, Insomnia, and The Prestige, while Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard provided music for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Zimmer scored Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises, without Howard.
• Production designer Nathan Crowley has worked with Nolan since Insomnia (with the exception of Inception).
• From Batman Begins, Nolan has been collaborating with special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, stunt coordinator Tom Struthers and visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin (from Double Negative).

Filmography[link]

Feature films[link]

Short films[link]

Reception[link]

As of October 2011^[update], Nolan's films have earned a total over nearly USD$ 1.2 billion at the North American box office, according to boxofficemojo.com. The variance is large: his independent debut, Following, was mostly shown at film festivals and earned $48,482 in just two theatres, while The Dark Knight earned $533,345,358 in 4,366 cinemas.^[35]

Critical[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

Publications[link]

• Nolan, Christopher"Charisma as Natural as Gravity". Christopher Nolan. Newsweek. 2008-01-26. A memoir of Heath Ledger
• Nolan, C. (Author); Nolan, Jonah (Preface) (2010), Inception: The Shooting Script, Insight Editions, ISBN 1-60887-015-4 
• Nolan, C. (2001), Memento & Following, Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-22994-8 
• Nolan, C.; Goyer, David, S. (2005), Batman Begins: The Screenplay, Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-21047-3 

See also[link]

• Syncopy Films

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Christopher Nolan

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Christopher Nolan

• Christopher Nolan at the Internet Movie Database
• Christopher Nolan at AllRovi
• Christopher Nolan at Yahoo! Movies
• NolanFans.com Website dedicated to news and information on Nolan's work
• Telegraph.co.uk Interview with Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale

To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, the introduction of this article may need to be rewritten. Please discuss this issue on the talk page and read the layout guide to make sure the section will be inclusive of all essential details. (May 2011)

Sir Michael Caine
Caine in 2008
Born	Maurice Joseph Micklewhite (1933-03-14) 14 March 1933 (age 79) Southwark, London, England, UK
Occupation	Actor, author
Years active	1953–present
Spouse	Patricia Haines (m. 1955–1962; divorced) Shakira Baksh (m. 1973–present)
Children	Dominique Caine (b. 1956) Natasha Caine (b. 1973)
Relatives	Stanley Caine (brother)
Website
www.michaelcaine.com

Sir Michael Caine, CBE (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English actor.

Caine is one of two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s, the other one being Jack Nicholson. In 2000, Caine was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to cinema.

Early life[link]

Caine was born in St Olave's Hospital, Rotherhithe, Southwark^[1] in South East London, the son of Ellen Frances Marie (née Burchell; 1900-1989), a cook and charwoman, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a fish market porter.^[2] His father was of English, Irish, and, reportedly, Irish Traveller ancestry.^[3][4][5] Caine was brought up in his mother's Protestant religion (his father was Catholic).^[6]

Caine grew up in Southwark, South London, and during the Second World War he was evacuated to North Runcton near King's Lynn in Norfolk.^[7] After the war, when his father was demobilised, the family was rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens at the Elephant and Castle in a pre-fabricated house made in Canada,^[8] as much of London's housing stock had been damaged during the Blitz in 1940-41.

The prefabs, as they were known, were intended to be temporary homes while London was rebuilt, but we ended up living there for eighteen years and for us, after a cramped flat with an outside toilet, it was luxury.^[9]

In 1944, he passed his eleven plus exam, winning a scholarship to Hackney Downs Grocers' School.^[10] After a year there he moved to Wilson's Grammar School in Camberwell (now Wilson's School in Wallington, South London), which he left at sixteen after gaining a School Certificate in six subjects. He then worked briefly as a filing clerk and messenger for a film company in Victoria Street and the film producer Jay Lewis in Wardour Street.^[11] From 1952, when he was called up to do his national service, until 1954, he served in the British Army's Royal Fusiliers, first at the BAOR HQ in Iserlohn, Germany and then on active service during the Korean War. Caine has said he would like to see the return of national service to help combat youth violence, stating: "I'm just saying, put them in the Army for six months. You're there to learn how to defend your country. You belong to the country. Then when you come out, you have a sense of belonging rather than a sense of violence."^[12]

Career[link]

1950s[link]

Caine's acting career began at the age of 20 in Horsham, Sussex when he responded to an advertisement in The Stage for an assistant stage manager who would also perform small walk-on parts for the Horsham-based Westminster Repertory Company who were performed at the Carfax Electric Theatre.^[13] Adopting the stage name "Michael Scott", In July 1953 he was cast as the drunkard Hindley in the Company's production of Wuthering Heights.^[14] He moved to the Lowestoft Repertory Company in Suffolk for a year when he was 22. It was here that he met his first wife.^[15] He has described the first nine years of his career as "really, really brutal." ^[16]

When his career took him to London after his provincial apprenticeship, his agent informed him that there was already a Michael Scott treading the boards in London and that he had to come up with a new name immediately. Speaking to his agent from a telephone box in Leicester Square, London, he looked around for inspiration, noted that The Caine Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon Cinema, and decided to change his name to "Michael Caine". (Humphrey Bogart was his "screen idol" and he would later play a part originally intended for Bogie in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King.^[17]) He has joked in interviews that had he looked the other way, he would have ended up as "Michael One Hundred and One Dalmatians".^[18] In 1959, he was Peter O'Toole's understudy in Lindsay Anderson's West End staging of Willis Hall's The Long and the Short and the Tall. He took over the role when O'Toole left to make Lawrence of Arabia (1960) and went on to a four-month tour of Britain and Ireland. He was cast in the 1956 movie A Hill in Korea partly because of his Korean War experience, to serve as both actor and technical adviser. His co-stars included Stanley Baker and Robert Shaw.

1960s[link]

A big break came for Caine when he was cast as Meff in James Saunders' Cockney comedy Next Time I'll Sing To You, when this play was presented at the New Arts Theatre in London on 23 January 1963.^[19][20] Scenes from the play's performance were featured in the April 1963 issue of Theatre World magazine.^[21]

When this play moved to the Criterion in Piccadilly with Michael Codron directing, he was visited backstage by Stanley Baker, his co-star in A Hill In Korea, who told him about the part of a Cockney corporal in his upcoming film Zulu, a film Baker was producing and starring in. Baker told Caine to visit the director, Cy Endfield, who informed him that he already had given the part that Baker had tipped Caine for to James Booth, a fellow Cockney who was Caine's friend, because he looked more Cockney than Caine did. Endfield then told the 6'2" Caine that he did not look like a Cockney but like an officer, and offered him a screen test for the role of a snobbish, upper class officer after Caine assured him that he could do a posh accent. Caine believes Enfield offered him, a Cockney, the role of an aristocrat as, being American, he did not have the endemic British class prejudice. Though he tested poorly, Endfield gave him the part that would make him a film star.^[22]

Location shooting for Zulu took place 14 weeks in Natal, South Africa in 1963.^[23][24][25] According to his 2011 autobiography The Elephant to Hollywood, Caine had been signed to a seven-year contract by Joseph E. Levine, whose Embassy Films was distributing Zulu. After the return of the cast to England and the completion of the film, Levine released him from the contract, telling him, "I know you're not, but you gotta face the fact that you look like a queer on screen." Levine gave his contract to his Zulu co-star James Booth.^[26]

Subsequently, Caine's agent got him cast in the BBC production Hamlet at Elsinore (1964) as Horatio in support of Christopher Plummer's Hamlet. Horatio was the only classical role Caine, who had never received dramatic training, would ever play.

Caine wrote, "...I decided that if my on-screen appearance was going to be an issue, then I would use it to bring out all Horatio's ambiguous sexuality."^[27]

After dozens of minor TV roles, Caine finally entered the public eye as the upper class British Army officer Gonville Bromhead in Zulu. This proved paradoxical, as Caine was to become notable for using a regional accent, rather than the Received Pronunciation hitherto considered proper for film actors. At the time, Caine's working class Cockney, just as with the Beatles' Liverpudlian accents, stood out to American and British audiences alike.

Zulu was closely followed by two of his best-known roles: the spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965), and the womanising title character in Alfie (1966). He went on to play Palmer in a further four films, Funeral in Berlin (1966), Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Bullet to Beijing (1995) and Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1995). Caine made his first film in the United States in 1966, after an invitation from Shirley MacLaine to play opposite her in Gambit. During the first two weeks, whilst staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he met long term friends John Wayne and agent "Swifty" Lazar.^[28]

1970s[link]

After working on The Italian Job with Noël Coward, and a solid role as RAF fighter pilot Squadron Leader Canfield in the all-star cast of Battle of Britain (both 1969), Caine played the lead in Get Carter (1971), a British gangster film. Caine was busy with successes including Sleuth (1972) opposite Laurence Olivier, and The Man Who Would Be King (1975) co-starring Sean Connery and directed by John Huston (which he has stated will be the film he wishes to be remembered for after his death). In 1976 he appeared in the screen adaptation by Tom Mankiewicz of the Jack Higgins novel The Eagle Has Landed as Oberst (Colonel) Kurt Steiner, the commander of a Luftwaffe paratroop brigade disguised as Polish paratroopers, whose mission was to kidnap or kill the then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, alongside co-stars Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter and Donald Pleasence. Subsequently in 1978, he starred in The Silver Bears, an adaptation of Paul Erdman's (1974) novel of the same name. Caine also was part of an all-star cast in A Bridge Too Far (1977).

1980s[link]

By the end of the decade, he had moved to the United States, but his choice of roles was often criticised — he admitted to and has since made many self-deprecating comments about taking parts, strictly for the money, in numerous films he knew to be bad, despite working with Hollywood's highly regarded directors such as Irwin Allen, Richard Fleischer, Michael Ritchie and Oliver Stone. Caine was averaging two films a year, but these included such failures as the BAFTA Award-nominated The Magus (1968), the Academy Award-nominated The Swarm (1978), Ashanti (1979) (which he claimed were the worst three films of all the other worst films he ever made), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), The Island (1980), The Hand (1981) and a reunion with his Sleuth co-star Laurence Olivier in The Jigsaw Man (1982).

Although Caine also took better roles, including a BAFTA-winning turn in Educating Rita (1983), and an Oscar-winning one in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and a Golden Globe-nominated one in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), he continued to appear in notorious duds like the thinly veiled skin flick Blame It on Rio, the Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais comedy Water and the critical-commercial flop Jaws: The Revenge (1987) (in which he had mixed feelings about the production and the final cut) and Bullseye! (1990); his appearing in so many films that did not meet with critical or box office acclaim made him the butt of numerous jokes on the subject. Of the former, Caine famously said (primarily about Jaws: The Revenge) "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."^[29] All these film failures later became cult films among his fans today. His other successful films (critically and/or financially) were the 1978 Academy Award-winning California Suite, the 1980 Golden Globe-nominated slasher film Dressed to Kill, the 1981 war film Escape to Victory, the 1982 film Deathtrap, and the 1986 Academy Award-nominated Mona Lisa. He also starred in Without a Clue, portraying Sherlock Holmes.

1990s[link]

The 1990s were a lean time for Caine, as he found good parts harder to come by. A high point came when he played Ebenezer Scrooge in the critically acclaimed The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), which he considers to be one of his most memorable roles.^{[citation needed]} He played the beleaguered stage director Lloyd Dallas in the film adaptation of Noises Off (1992). He also played a villain in the Steven Seagal film On Deadly Ground (1994). He was in two straight to video Harry Palmer sequels and a few television films. However, Caine's reputation as a pop icon was still intact, thanks to his roles in films such as The Italian Job and Get Carter. His performance in 1998's Little Voice was seen as something of a return to form, and won him a Golden Globe Award. Better parts followed, including The Cider House Rules (1999), for which he won his second Oscar.

2000s[link]

Michael Caine at the European premiere of The Dark Knight, 2008

In the 2000s, Caine appeared in Miss Congeniality (2000), Last Orders (2001), The Quiet American (2002), for which he was Oscar-nominated, and others that helped rehabilitate his reputation. Several of Caine's classic films have been remade, including The Italian Job, Get Carter, Alfie and Sleuth. In the 2007 remake of Sleuth, Caine took over the role Laurence Olivier played in the 1972 version and Jude Law played Caine's original role. Caine also starred in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) as Austin's father and in 2003 he co-starred with Robert Duvall in Secondhand Lions. In 2005, he was cast as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth in the first production of the new Batman film series. In 2006, he appeared in the films Children of Men and The Prestige. In 2007 he appeared in Flawless, while in 2008 he reprised his role as Alfred in Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed Batman sequel, The Dark Knight as well as starring in the British drama Is Anybody There?, which explores the final days of life.

It was reported by Empire magazine that Caine had said that Harry Brown (released on 13 November 2009) would be his last lead role.^[30] Caine later declared (in the Daily Mirror) that he had been misquoted by the magazine.^[31]

2010s[link]

Caine had a cameo appearance in Christopher Nolan's science fiction thriller, Inception. He voiced Finn McMissile in Pixar's 2011 film Cars 2 and also voiced a supporting role in the animation, Gnomeo and Juliet. He also starred in the 2012 film Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, as Josh Hutcherson's character's grandfather; the film also featured Dwayne Johnson and Vanessa Hudgens. Caine will reprise his role as Alfred Pennyworth in the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, due for release in mid 2012. Filming has begun at Wollaton Hall, Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, England.

Awards and honours[link]

Caine has been Oscar-nominated six times, winning his first Academy Award for the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters, and his second in 1999 for The Cider House Rules, in both cases as a supporting actor.

He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1992 Queen's Birthday Honours,^[32] and in the 2000 New Year Honours he was knighted as Sir Maurice Micklewhite CBE.^[33][34] On 5 January 2011, he was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France's culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand.^[35]

In 2008, he was awarded the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Showbusiness at the Variety Club Awards.^[36]

In popular culture[link]

Caine is a popular subject for impressionists and mimics, having a voice and manner of speaking that are distinctive, yet fairly easy to imitate. Most Caine impressions include the catchphrase "Not a lot of people know that." Peter Sellers initiated this when he appeared on BBC1's Parkinson show on 28 October 1972 and said: "Not many people know that. This is my Michael Caine impression. You see, Mike's always quoting from the Guinness Book of Records. At the drop of a hat he'll trot one out. 'Did you know that it takes a man in a tweed suit five and a half seconds to fall from the top of Big Ben to the ground?' Now there's not many people who know that!". The line had been used earlier in Spike Milligan's script for The Last Goon Show of All, performed on 5 October 1972.^[37] In 1983, Caine was given the line to say as an in-joke in the film Educating Rita. The line has also been parodied, along with its impression, in the British sketch comedy show, Harry Enfield's Television Programme, with Paul Whitehouse as a stalking neighbourhood character called Michael Paine, who introduced himself with the line "My name is Michael Paine, and I am a nosy neighbour."^{[clarification needed]} Caine himself parodied the phenomenon in an interview with Michael Parkinson, imitating others' impressions of him and including the catchphrase.^[38]

Personal life[link]

Caine with Scarlett Johansson at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert 2008

Caine lives in Leatherhead, Surrey, and is patron to the Leatherhead Drama Festival.^[39] He has also lived in North Stoke, Oxfordshire, Clewer near Windsor, Berkshire, Lowestoft in Suffolk and Chelsea Harbour in London. In addition, Caine owns a unit at the Apogee in Miami Beach, Florida. He still keeps a small flat near where he grew up in South East London.^[40] Caine has published two volumes of memoirs, What's It All About? in 1992 and "The Elephant to Hollywood" in 2010.^[41]

He was married to actress Patricia Haines from 1955 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique (who was named after the heroine of the novel The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand).^[42] He dated Bianca Jagger in 1968. Caine has been married to actress and model Shakira Baksh since 8 January 1973. They met after Caine saw her appearing in a Maxwell House coffee commercial and a friend gave him her telephone number. They have a daughter, Natasha Haleema.^[43][44]

Some time after his mother died, Caine and his younger brother, Stanley, learned they had an elder half-brother, named David. He suffered from severe epilepsy and had been kept in Cane Hill Mental Hospital his entire life. Although their mother regularly visited her first son in the hospital, even her husband did not know the child existed. David died in 1992.^[45]

Trivia books written by Caine include Not Many People Know That!, And Not Many People Know This Either!, Michael Caine's Moving Picture Show and Not A Lot of People Know This is 1988. Proceeds from the books went to the National Playing Fields Association (now Fields In Trust) of which Caine was a prominent supporter.

Unlike many actors who adopt their stage name for everyday use, Caine still uses his real name when he is not working.^{[citation needed]}

Caine was called up for national service in the British Army in 1951 when he was aged 18 and was deployed to South Korea to help in the aftermath of the North Korean invasion. He served as part of the Royal Fusiliers. He said he had gone into it feeling sympathetic to communism, coming as he did from a poor family. But he has said the experience left him permanently repelled.^[46]

Politics[link]

Caine has been open about his political views. He left Britain in the 1970s, citing the 82% tax levied on top earners by the Labour government of the time, but returned to Britain several years later when taxes were lowered:

"I decided not to become a tax exile, so I stayed in Britain, but they kept putting the tax up, so I'd do any old thing every now and then to pay the tax, that was my tax exile money. I realised that's not a socialist country, it's a communist country without a dictator, so I left and I was never going to come back. Maggie Thatcher came in and put the taxes back down and in the end, you know, you don't mind paying tax. What am I going to do? Not pay tax and drive around in a Rolls Royce, with cripples begging on the street like you see in some countries?"^[47]

"I voted for Maggie Thatcher because I thought we needed a change from that long period of socialism; I voted for Tony Blair because we had a great long period of Conservatism." ^[48]

In 2009, Caine openly criticised the Labour government's proposed new 50% tax on top earners:

"The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent and if it goes to 51 I will be back in America. They have reached their limit with me and that's what will happen to a lot of people. You know how much they made out of that high taxation all those years ago? Nothing. But they sent a mass of incredible brains to America. We've got 3.5 million layabouts laying about on benefits, and I'm 76, getting up at 6 am to go to work to keep them. Let's get everybody back to work so we can save a couple of billion and cut tax, not keep sticking it on."^[49]

"You're saying to poor people, 'let's tax those rich gits' and I understand that. You slice up the cake, give everyone a chance, but don't destroy the people that are making the bloody cake! I really believe about taking care of people, I don't mind paying tax. It's how the government spends my tax that I detest, really detest, because I see the waste. More money than all our income tax is spent on benefits. Now you tell me there is nothing wrong with that system."^[50]

Caine also stated in 2009 that he was likely to vote for the Conservatives again: