Two-time Oscar winner Michael Caine says he has “sort of retired now.” The 90-year-old English actor has appeared in over 160 films during his eight-decade career.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Caine says, “I am bl**dy 90 now, and I can’t walk properly and all that. I sort of am retired now.”
If Caine retires, the upcoming The Great Escaper, costarring Glenda Jackson, will mark his final movie appearance. The film is based on the true story of a British WWII veteran named Bernard Jordan who, at age 89, broke out of his retirement home to attend the 70th-anniversary D-Day commemorations in France.
Michael Caine Required a Walking Stick on the Set of The Great Escaper
“I was so happy to do it,” Caine says of his role in The Great Escaper. “I just loved the character of Bernie. I thought he was incredible, and it’s so beautifully written. With COVID and all that, I hadn’t done a picture for three years, and I thought I was finished. And I suddenly did it — and had such a wonderful time.” He continues:
“They gave me a very good walking stick, and I was able to do scenes that needed that. I’d just do them once, and then fall over. But just one take, and that’s it. Forget it.
“The worst thing about [aging] is that so much disappears from your life. You can’t run around, you can’t play football, and you gradually realize you’re approaching death.
“[Death] could be just around the corner at 90. But I’m quite happy. I’m sitting here writing, doing my thing. I like it. I have two children, three grandchildren and a wife… Everyone’s going to join me eventually. No one’s going to say, ‘I’m so sorry you’re going to die — I wish you were like me and not going to die.’ Everybody’s going to die. At least I’ve lived to f—ing 90; I didn’t die at 9, or 19 or 29. I’m 90, and I’ve had the best possible life I could have thought of. The best possible wife, and the best possible family. They may not be a family that other people would say is the best possible family — but the best possible family for me.”
Caine's final (?) movie premieres on October 6 in U.K. theater, distributed by Warner Bros. U.K. The Great Escaper is directed by Oliver Parker and written by William Ivory.