Sir Michael - Caining it in the 70s

Michael Caine in <i>Harry Brown</i>. Photo / Supplied

Sir Michael Caine is one of the funniest actors on the planet. He's also one of the oldest.

It has been two years since the acting veteran had leading roles, in Is Anybody There? and Sleuth. Now he is Harry Brown, a geriatric vigilante who is spurred into action when his old friend is killed on a dismal English housing estate.

"Harry's suffering from emphysema and we're actually playing him as 82," says Caine, who wheezes convincingly in the film but looks far healthier today.

Incredibly, the housing estate where the film was shot is in the same Elephant & Castle neighbourhood where Caine, who was christened Maurice Mickelwhite, grew up. It was literally so close to home that his name was on a plaque on one of the walls. "It's been up there for five years and it's never been defaced," he notes proudly.

The actor, who was knighted in 2000 in recognition of his contribution to cinema, did not do the low-budget film for the money, but for the interesting opportunity it gave him at this stage of his career. Caine doesn't need extra cash, largely because he once owned three hugely successful restaurants.

"I sold them all 10 years ago," he says. "I found that chefs were more annoying than bloody movie stars."

A sharp dresser who is imposing in stature, Caine maintains his career longevity stems from being an everyman rather than a matinee idol. "People recognise themselves in me, which is why if you see me walk along a street, people talk to me like they know me and I'm their friend," he says.

The son of a fish-porter father and a charwoman mother, Caine was an acting trailblazer. "I was a young working-class actor with a cockney accent, which was not exactly de rigeur at the time, yet I made it in Zulu playing a very upper-class army officer. Until then I was the butler saying 'Dinner is served' - and I'm still a butler in Batman," he chuckles.

The actor's bespectacled characters were even seen as sex symbols, especially his male chauvinist Alfie. Caine went on to play other male chauvinists: secret agent Harry Palmer in the Len Deighton spy thrillers The Ipcress Files, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain, and gangster Jack Carter in Get Carter.

During the Swinging Sixties, he was quite the lad about town. "If the paparazzi were like they are now, I would have found it impossible. Back then there was no market for celebrity photos. It's all these magazines where people want someone with their arses hanging out of their trousers or something."

Of course, Caine hasn't done anything worth reporting for some time. While his first marriage to actress Patricia Haines was short-lived (they had a daughter, Dominique, now 52), Caine, who was drinking up to three bottles of vodka a day, was tamed by his second wife, Shakira Baksh, a former Miss Guyana. He had seen her on a television ad and became determined to track her down - even if it meant travelling to Brazil, where the ad was set.

"It turned out she lived on the Fulham Rd in London, so I didn't need to go to Brazil," Caine laughs. "I found out her number and phoned her. And phoned her and phoned her. It was really weird because I've had a very happy marriage for 37 years, but things depend on such a small thing. The last night I phoned her was the last night I was going to phone her ... And then she said, 'All right, I'll come out'. And that was it."

Their marriage has lasted, he says, because they are partners in everything. "We don't keep the outside world out. It's also because I love women. You think all men love women, but they don't. I remember my wife was doing a magazine interview in our flat and I heard the woman ask what first attracted her to me.

"And I was listening, ha ha ha, and she said, 'It was the way he treated his mother. I knew he loved women'."

The actor now dotes on his grandkids. Natasha, his 36-year-old daughter with Shakira, has given her dad a 17-month-old grandson, as well as 6-month-old twins, a boy and a girl.

While the world's proudest grandad will reprise his role as Alfred the butler in Christopher Nolan's new Batman instalment next year - Nolan calls him his good luck charm - Caine plays what he terms "a mascot role" in the director's current box office hit, Inception.

"The movie was shrouded in secrecy when we filmed it," he recalls. "I'm Leonardo DiCaprio's professor and father-in-law and while I knew what my character was about, I didn't know the rest of the story. It was quite funny, because when people got off the plane it was half the cast of Batman!"

*Harry Brown is out in cinemas from Thursday. Inception is out now.

-Herald On Sunday / View