Words: Jonathan Wells
“You don’t retire from the movies,” says Michael Caine bluntly. “The movies retire you. The scripts stop coming, or the money’s not good enough, and then it’s not even worth getting out of bed.”
It’s a rather somber note on which to start. But, thankfully, the 87-year old actor is not speaking from experience. A British film icon with two Academy Awards to his name, Caine is a man in demand to this day, having starred in over 120 films — and counting.
“But if someone asked me if I wanted to live to 100, I’d say no,” the actor continues. “And they’d say: why not? And it’s because I couldn’t afford it. If I had to stop working, I have a very high standard of living, and I couldn’t keep it up. I’d rather die than go back to when I was young, living in a tiny room with nothing but a bed.”
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