The Cockney knight

‘Hollywood was different back then.’  For a start, the Awards ceremonies of the ‘60’s weren’t dominated by ‘very small young men who had just been in a vampire film’. Soirees brimmed with the gravitas of Beverley Hills’ most statuesque, those around whom a youthful Michael Caine gawped and assimilated anecdotes until, all of a sudden, he realised he was counted among them.   

Diminutive vampires aside, The Elephant to Hollywood, which is Michael Caine’s second autobiography, contains equal reverence for a select crème of today’s acting talent, and the giants of the Hollywood heyday. Jude Law received mixed reviews for Alfie, but Caine can’t rate him highly enough. Even the original Alfie of 1966, in which Caine plays the eponymous lothario, had its critics. The French, Caine recalls, ‘couldn’t believe that an Englishman could attract one woman, let alone ten of them’. But for the most part, Alfie and its aftermath affirmed that Michael Caine had made it.