Actor brings seven-decade career to close, saying he wants to go out on a high note after his last role in The Great Escaper
Michael Caine has confirmed his retirement at the age of 90, drawing to a close a glittering career in which he won two Oscars.
After his comments last month that he was “sort of retired”, Caine made it official, telling the BBC’s Today programme: “I keep saying I’m going to retire. Well I am now.
Continue reading...British director was known for his often bleak and brutal gangster films, most famously his 1971 film Get Carter starring Michael Caine
Mike Hodges, the British director known for films including Get Carter, Croupier, The Terminal Man and Flash Gordon, has died at the age of 90.
Mike Kaplan, a longtime friend and producer on Hodges’ final feature film I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, confirmed his death to the Guardian. Hodges died at his home in Dorset on Saturday. A cause of death was not given.
Continue reading...The Hobbit actor, who is back on TV in the sitcom Breeders, recalls sharp dressing on a budget, discovering Public Enemy and how Michael Caine got him into film
The first music I latched on to was British punk – the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Jam. I just loved the power, the rawness and the rudeness. You had to turn it down when your dad came in the room; your parents were supposed to hate it. Bob Marley and the Wailers and Linton Kwesi Johnson became a religion alongside the Catholicism I was taught in school. From 17, I was a little hip-hop head, mad on Jungle Brothers, Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy. I was obsessed with politics in that way you are as a teenager – when you actually know nothing.
I’m not a particularly knowledgable fan of the Fall, but I loved hearing their early stuff via my older brothers (I’m the youngest of five). I thought this bored Manc with this slightly aggressive snarl was great. I like hearing accents in music. I remember hearing Ian Dury for the first time and thinking: “Jesus Christ!” Not everyone can sound like Rod Stewart. I’m not sure there has to be a template for what a rock’n’roll singer sounds like anyway. You’d want Mark E Smith to like you even though he would really hate you. I have often thought that about John Lydon. I would love to say hello to him, but he’d hate me, just on principle.