The Elephant to Hollywood (23 page)

In the mid-seventies, apartheid in South Africa was in full force so for obvious reasons we had to shoot in Kenya. Sidney was already a massive star in Hollywood but in Kenya he was treated like a god, whereas absolutely no one seemed to know or care who I was. It began at the airport in Nairobi when I arrived with Shakira and baby Natasha and the man sent to meet us hurried straight past and headed for a short fat bald bloke. This was a strange sensation for me after several years of fame and although I tried to keep a sense of proportion and convince myself that it would be good to be able to walk down a street without being harassed by fans, the novelty did wear off after a bit.

Sidney, however, remained as cool as ever – although he did get very excited when he was invited to meet the president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. This was a great honour and Sidney was very proud of it. I was disappointed that no one had asked me to come along, but I pretended I didn’t care. He was flown to Nairobi for the great meeting and I waited around for him to come back from the visit. When he turned up, I asked casually, ‘How did it go?’ He looked at me for a minute and then he said, ‘The first question Jomo Kenyatta asked me was, “And what do you do, Mr Poitier?”’

Jomo Kenyatta may not have known who Sidney Poitier was but the staff at the Kenya Safari Club were well aware of the identity of their guest. I went there with Sidney a couple of times for dinner and I noticed that he always got much better food than the rest of us, no matter what we ordered. So I’m going to claim credit for one of the best lines in a comic movie ever, because at every dinner I had with Sidney, when the waiter said to me, ‘And what would you like, sir?’ I’d say – just like the customer in the diner when Meg Ryan is faking an orgasm in
When Harry Met Sally
– ‘I’ll have what he’s having!’

I fell in love with Africa, with its vast landscape and its people, all over again while making this film. But I thought I sensed something even more profound going on with Sidney. One afternoon we were shooting at a little private airfield near Mount Kenya. During a break in the filming, I was leaning up against an old hangar, smoking, and I looked up to see Sidney standing right at the end of the runway gazing at Mount Kenya, silhouetted against it, the very essence of an African. As he walked back towards me, I said to him, ‘Discovering your roots, Sidney?’ He smiled and paused for a minute and then said, ‘They don’t go through Gucci shoes, Michael.’ But I knew they had.

Sidney is, of course, a mould-breaker. Always an actor first, this hugely talented man has had a huge impact on the advancement of black people without ever making a big deal of it. But he’s funny with it. One evening, about ten years ago, we were both at the house of a mutual friend, Arnie Kopelson, the producer of, among other films,
Platoon
. As is usually the case when you go round to people’s houses in Beverly Hills, Arnie was showing a film, a comedy with an all-black cast, in his home cinema. Now all of us are comedians, one way or another, so nothing is taken very seriously, but we finished this film without a single laugh: it was dreadful. And we all turned to Sidney, who was the only black person in the room, and he said with a completely straight face, ‘This movie has put African Americans back exactly eleven months.’

Not only is Sidney a great friend and someone I see whenever I’m in LA, there are also a few big things in my life that he’s answerable for. One is for my partnership in the restaurant business with Peter Langan (more on him later) and the other is golf. Sidney Poitier is one of two reasons that I don’t play golf. He’s the kindest, gentlest person you’d ever wish to meet, but when he tried to teach me the game, I was so bad he
nearly
lost his temper with me – and I decided I’d better give up trying to learn for his sake. The other reason I don’t play golf is Sean Connery, but more on him later, too.

Although I had loved being in Kenya, after
The Wilby Conspiracy
I was keen to settle down in England for a while and so I took on a so-called art movie,
The Romantic Englishwoman
. This gave me exposure to yet another type of star – the politically active kind – in this case, Glenda Jackson. In fact the whole movie turned out to be rather a serious business – certainly compared with
The Wilby Conspiracy
, which had been
about
a serious business, but still managed to be fun at the same time. Joseph Losey, the director of
The Romantic Englishwoman
, was not a bundle of laughs, for a start. He had one of those very grim faces and didn’t crack a smile from the first day of shooting to the last. I pride myself on being able to make people laugh and bet one of the crew a tenner that I’d get one from Joe by the end of the film. I lost hands down.

In
The Romantic Englishwoman
I was playing (rather against type) a wimpy husband who lets his wife (Glenda) get up to all sorts with her insatiable lover, who was played by Helmut Berger. Glenda and I got on fine, and Helmut and I got on fine, but Glenda and Helmut didn’t get on at all fine and I found myself a whole new role as I played shuttle diplomacy between the two of them. Their love scenes in particular lacked conviction and I was determined to do better when it came to my turn. Love scenes are actually very hard to do in movies. For a start they are rarely romantic – both partners are usually wearing a sort of padded codpiece to prevent anything untoward and it’s hard not to get a bit embarrassed. Glenda, however, seemed in complete command – although she managed to unnerve me completely. We were all set up in bed and ready to go when she held up her hand to stop proceedings and rummaged under a pillow. She’d hidden a little screw of toilet paper there and, unwrapping it, she revealed a tiny false tooth, which she popped into her mouth to fill a gap. Somehow I just couldn’t summon the same passionate zeal after that . . .

It’s often difficult to explain the way that the movie world works. Theatrical legends like Olivier, icons like Frank Sinatra, glamorous Hollywood stars like Elizabeth Taylor, mould-breaking stars like Sidney Poitier, these were the people I worked with and the people we hung out with. But even in a world where the rich and famous can get together on a regular and casual basis it is still possible to be taken aback by who you could bump into – and this is what happened to me in Paris, in the autumn of 1974.

Shakira and I were on a mini-honeymoon, staying at the Hotel Georges Cinq. We’d had a wonderful long weekend and were just sitting up in bed with our first cup of coffee of the morning discussing how we’d spend the day when the phone went. ‘Michael Caine?’ The voice seemed unmistakeable, but even so I couldn’t quite believe it. Was it one of my friends taking the mickey? ‘Yes?’ I said cautiously. ‘It’s John Huston here.’ I nearly dropped the phone. He was very easy to imitate – I always thought if you ever heard God talk he would sound just like John Huston – but this really
was John Huston
! I shook myself. ‘Michael? Are you still there? I’m in the bar next door – can you spare me a few minutes?’ It took me just eight to get shaved, washed and dressed and round the corner to meet the director above all directors I most admired, the man who had directed my hero Humphrey Bogart in six of his greatest films, the man I regarded as the greatest all-round movie talent of our time.

The greatest all-round movie talent of our time was sitting at the bar nursing a large vodka when I walked in. When my own drink arrived I downed a large slug of it without flinching and he nodded approvingly. ‘For twenty years,’ he began, ‘I’ve been trying to make a movie based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling called ‘‘The Man Who Would Be King’’. I had it all set up. In fact,’ he paused and looked me in the eye, ‘the two stars I had lined up were sitting right where you are now.’ It would have been cooler to say nothing but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Who were they?’ I asked. ‘Gable and Bogart,’ said John Huston. I drew in my breath. There was a dramatic pause. ‘And then they both went and died on me.’ There was another long pause while he looked down mistily into his glass and I tried to work out what all this meant. At last he looked up again. ‘But I’ve got the backing now and I want you to play Peachy Carnehan.’ I hardly dared to ask, but went ahead anyway. ‘Which part was Bogart going to play?’ I blurted out. ‘Peachy,’ said John. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘Without reading the script?’ he asked, raising one of those bushy eyebrows. I had to admit it looked a bit eager. I tried to calm down and be sensible. ‘And the Gable character?’ I asked. ‘He’s called Daniel Dravot,’ said John, ‘and he’s Peachy’s best friend.’ I sincerely hoped it would be someone that could be
my
best friend. This time it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Sean Connery,’ he said. There was nothing more to be said.

Peachy and Danny were two sergeants with the British Army in India who go AWOL in an attempt to become kings of the ancient – and fabulously rich – kingdom of Kafiristan. We were shooting the movie on location in Morocco and
our
ancient and fabulously rich kingdom was the Mamounia, a magnificent old hotel in Marrakesh. It was a wonderful place to base ourselves and although we had to get used to the rather slow pace of service in North Africa in those days, it was a haven for our team. I have very happy memories of the shoot. As well as Sean, I was working with Christopher Plummer to whose Hamlet I had played Horatio in my one and only venture into Shakespeare just before
Zulu
came out and the camera crew, sound technicians and one of the assistant directors were also old friends. In John Foreman as producer, too, we had a man who shared John Huston’s vision for the movie – which is not always the case – and so the team was a joy to work with from the top down.

For me, as ever, one of the great pleasures was having Shakira along on the shoot. In fact it turned out that it was just as well she had joined me. On the night before we began, John Huston told us the news that the girl due to play the part of Roxanne, the beautiful Arabian princess, had dropped out at the last minute. He seemed to be casting his eyes around the room rather helplessly looking for inspiration, but I couldn’t help noticing that his gaze kept returning to my beautiful wife. Shakira had noticed it, too. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’ John shrugged and smiled enigmatically. ‘Of course not, honey,’ he said smoothly.

I spent most of the night trying to persuade Shakira to have a go, but she was adamant and eventually I gave up. I didn’t blame her – it was not what she had signed up for and I could understand her reluctance. She turned up loyally on set, though, to watch us start shooting and I saw John go over to where she was standing, during a break. After just a moment she started smiling, after a few more minutes she was actually laughing and just before we began shooting again John announced that Shakira had agreed to play the part of Princess Roxanne. I’ve never managed to find out what he said, but I’d like to know!

Shakira was very nervous about stepping in to the role at such short notice and with so little experience, but John was a brilliant director who inspired confidence in all of us. I was probably more nervous than Shakira was herself and John eventually told me to make myself scarce during her scenes unless I was actually in them, because I was not helping matters. In the end she played her part magnificently – including a very difficult scene in which she had to go into a strange sort of fit or trance, something which would have been hard enough for a very experienced actress let alone a beginner.

In
The Man Who Would Be King
, John Huston lived up to every inch of his reputation as a great director. Throughout the making of the movie he addressed Sean and me as ‘Danny’ and ‘Peachy’, even off set, and he was somehow able to convey with the minimum of fuss or explanation exactly what he was looking for in a character. He didn’t tell you much, he just watched you very closely and you knew you were doing it right just by looking at him. He held the view – rare among directors – that good actors know what they are doing and should be left alone to do it if at all possible. I said to him once, ‘You don’t really tell us much, do you?’ And he said, ‘Two things, Michael. The art of good direction is casting. If you cast it right you don’t have to tell the actors what to do. Also,’ he went on, ‘you’re being paid a lot of money to do this, Michael. You should be able to get it right on your own – you don’t need me to tell you what to do!’ He only ever stopped me once mid-take, when I had to tell Christopher Plummer (who was playing Rudyard Kipling), what Danny and I were up to. Kipling warns us that what we were planning was very dangerous and Peachy replies, ‘We are not little men.’ I put the emphasis on the word ‘not’, but John held up his hand. ‘We are not
little
men,’ he said. I shrugged and did it his way and when we finished the take I saw he was smiling. He was right. We were not little men – under Huston’s direction we became giants.