This Could Be Michael Caine's Last Film

Michael Caine appeared in his first movie three years after Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. Nearly seven decades later, The Great Escaper might very well be his last. "I am bloody 90 now, and I can't walk properly," the British actor tells the Telegraph. "I sort of am retired now." Caine previously indicated the 2021 Lina Roessler comedy Best Sellers would be his final film, per Variety. (He also appeared in 2022's Medieval, though that film was shot in 2018.) But when presented with the script for The Great Escaper, based on the true story of how 89-year-old Royal Navy veteran Bernard "Bernie" Jordan escaped his old age home to travel to France for the 70th anniversary of D-Day, Caine felt compelled to put off retirement.

"With COVID and all that, I hadn't done a picture for three years, and I thought I was finished," the two-time Oscar-winner tells the Telegraph, per Deadline. But "I just loved the character of Bernie," he continues. "I suddenly did it—and had such a wonderful time." That's not to say the film wasn't a challenge. "They gave me a very good walking stick, and I was able to do scenes that needed that," says Caine, who's been using a cane for many years. "I'd just do them once, and then fall over." Director Oliver Parker says the team was "careful to ensure that Michael wasn't working too hard" as "for him to have returned to acting after not having made a film in a while, and in the way he did, was quite a thing."

Parker adds the casting in the film, hitting UK theaters Oct. 6, worked well as Caine was able "to share his vulnerabilities." "I've rarely seen him playing a character that has such frailty," the director says. Though there's been talk of Caine resuming the role of Arthur Tressler, the financial sponsor of a team of magicians known as the Four Horsemen, for Now You See Me 3, it's not clear that movie will ever be made, Collider reports. If another film isn't in the cards—"[death] could be just around the corner," says Caine—that's fine by him. "I'm quite happy," he tells the Telegraph. "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." (More Michael Caine stories.)