Michael Caine Announces Retirement: ‘I Might As Well Leave With All This’ Success

Michael Caine has taken his final bow as an actor, formally announcing his retirement.

“Funny enough, I’d retired when I was sent the script, and I turned it down three times, but I kept falling in love with him every time I read it, and so I did it,” Caine, 90, said during a Saturday, October 14, appearance on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program, while discussing his new film, The Great Escaper. “I kept saying I’m gonna retire. Well, I am now.”

The accomplished actor admitted that he “figured” it was time to hang up his hat after playing the lead in a movie, which has gotten “wonderful reviews” already.

“The only parts I’m likely to get now are old men — 90-year-old men [or] well, maybe 85, you know?” Caine added. “And I thought, ‘Well, I might as well leave with all this. I’ve got wonderful reviews. What am I gonna do to beat this?’”

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Caine portrays World War II veteran Bernard “Bernie” Johnson in Oliver Parker’s Great Escaper, which is based on a true story. In the film, Bernie sneaks out of his nursing home in order to attend the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France. The movie, which was written by William Ivory, also stars the late Glenda Jackson.

While The Great Escaper shows the fragility of older individuals, Caine opened up about how that differs from his real life.

“I think in this case with me, it’s not quite as diminishing as you’d think because I’m 90 and I remember when I was young, talking with old men [who were] 90 and they were a little bit like me [now]: they were tiny old men,” he explained during the radio show. “And I thought, ‘I’m not like that,’ and it’s changed. I read an article that said, ‘If you were born in 1950, you will live at least until 100.’ I was born in 1933, so I got a bit of time to make up.”

Caine previously hinted at his retirement during an October 6 interview with the U.K.’s The Telegraph. “I wasn't 90 then. I am bloody 90 now, and I can't walk properly and all that,” he told the newspaper earlier this month. “I sort of am retired now.”

Speaking with The Telegraph, Caine quipped that at the age of 90 “nobody expects you to do very much.”

“You can't run around, you can't play football, and you gradually realize you're approaching death,” he added. “Everybody’s going to die. At least I've lived to f--king 90. … [It’s] the best possible life I could have thought of [with] the best possible wife and the best possible family.”

He has been married to Shakira Caine since 1973, and they share daughter Natasha, 50. Michael also shares daughter Dominique, 67, with ex-wife Patricia Haines.

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Michael previously contemplated retirement two years earlier, telling BBC hosts on “Kermode and Mayo's Film Review” that he thought Best Sellers might be his last film.

“Funnily enough, it has turned out to be my last part, really because I haven't worked for two years, and I have a spine problem, which affects my legs, so I can't walk very well,” he said in October 2021. “And I also wrote a book, a couple of books, which were published and were successful. So, I'm now not an actor, I'm a writer, which is lovely because as an actor, you have to get up at half past 6 in the morning and go to the studio. As a writer, you can start writing without leaving the bed.”

Michael subsequently tweeted that he had not retired, but “not a lot of people know that.”

Now that he’s retired, he has plenty of time to enjoy the company of his “little old lady,” wife Shakira, and their “family of grandchildren,” which he adores. “I’ve been lucky in every way, with myself and with my wife,” Michael gushed on Saturday. “I’m very happy.”