“He’s not everyone’s idea of a fairy godmother”: The actor who saved Michael Caine’s career
Having continued acting until announcing his retirement at the age of 90, Michael Caine remained a staple of cinema from the 1960s right through to the 2020s, but he was considering packing it in altogether when he found his career in danger of an irreversible downward spiral.
The mid-1990s was hardly the most fruitful period of the star’s professional life, with Caine admitting the decision to reprise the role of Harry Palmer three decades after The Ipcress File launched the original espionage trilogy was a mistake. In fact, he referred to the back-to-back fourth and fifth chapters made exclusively for television as the single worst experience of his working life.
That was also the period where he found himself hamming it up as the villain in a Steven Seagal movie, with Caine knowing full well when he signed on that the martial artist’s directorial debut On Deadly Ground was going to be awful, breaking his own “cardinal rule” of bad movies in the process.
With his memoirs being published in 1992 and selling well, and his side-line in the restaurant business keeping him ticking over, Caine was beginning to embrace the fact his status as a silver screen fixture was nearing its end. However, the most unlikely angel on his shoulder would soon appear, considering the saviour of his career was one of Hollywood’s most famous hellraisers.
The two had already been friends for years at that point, but when Jack Nicholson decided to gauge Caine’s interest in co-starring alongside him under the direction of ‘New Hollywood’ founding figure Bon Rafelson in neo-noir crime thriller Blood and Wine, it ended up setting the stage for the powerhouse performer to regain the self-confidence and belief that had been sorely lacking during his downturn.
“The combination of the three was seductive and I decided to have one last shot at being a movie actor,” Caine wrote in The Daily Mail. “It was the best decision I ever made. Jack’s a tremendous actor who takes life easy, and I owe him for restoring my faith in this often nasty business.”
Blood and Wine may have bombed with a vengeance at the box office, but starring as a safecracker opposite Nicholson in a heist flick with dangerous consequences reinvigorated his passion for acting, with the latter’s timely intervention preventing Caine from turning his back on the industry for good in favour of focusing on his extracurricular activities.
“I know he’s not everyone’s idea of a fairy godmother, but he did it for me,” Caine reflected on the notorious party animal coming along with the right project at the right time to wave a magic wand and reinvigorate the Get Carter, Alfie, and The Italian Job legend’s passion, which had been in dangerously short supply in the years immediately beforehand.