Free The Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine

contempt. ‘You’ll only ever be a star.’
    Joan may have thought I was destined for stardom, but no one else seemed to agree. The next few months and years were very hard. I used to hang about a casting agency just off Trafalgar Square run by a man called Ronnie Curtis, waiting to see if I could get the odd walk-on part – play, TV, film, I didn’t care. On one occasion I got a job just because I happened to fit the policeman’s uniform the film company had already got in their wardrobe. When I wasn’t in work (which was most of the time) and couldn’t stand sitting around in Ronnie’s office any longer, I’d go to the places where all the other young, unemployed actors used to hang out – the café under the Arts Theatre in Sackville Street, the Salisbury pub in St Martin’s Lane, the Legrain coffee shop in Soho, or Raj’s (illegal) afternoon drinking club. There was great comfort in knowing it was just as tough for everyone else but it was a soul-destroying time. And it wasn’t just the lack of jobs – every time I was rejected at an audition I had to pick myself back up and start again. Occasionally people have criticised the sums of money I’ve made from movies – well, I always think back to the ten years of hard work, of misery, of poverty and uncertainty I had to go through to get started. As an out-of-work actor I couldn’t rent a room, borrow money from the bank or get insurance. It’s not surprising so many eventually decide they can’t take it any more.
    I was nearly one of them. One night, when I really was on the verge of finally giving up the struggle, I placed my regular phone call to Josephine. Every evening at six o’clock, all of us young hopefuls would rush to the phone boxes in Leicester Square to call our agents to see if any jobs had come in that day. Usually there was nothing going, but this time Josephine had some good news: she’d managed to get me a small part in a TV play of The Lark by Jean Anouilh – courtesy of Julian Aymes, the director of A Hill in Korea , who had asked for me.  There was one problem – I’d have to become a member of the actors’ trades union Equity and there was already an actor on their books with my stage name, Michael Scott. Josephine said I’d have to change my name in the next half hour so she could send the contract back. I put down the phone and went and sat down on a bench in the middle of Leicester Square. It was – as now – the venue for all the premiere movie releases. I looked around at all the cinemas, at all the stars up there with their names in lights, and tried to imagine myself alongside them. Michael – ? And then I saw it. Humphrey Bogart, my favourite actor, my hero, was starring in The Caine Mutiny . Caine – because it was short, because it was easy to spell, because I was feeling very mutinous at the time – and because, like Cain in the Old Testament, I, too, was outside Paradise. Michael Caine I would be.

4
    Everyone Gets Lucky Sometimes . . .

    I may have had a name that fitted on a billboard but billboards were pretty thin on the ground during the next few years. I got the occasional bit part in a film or TV drama, including a couple of episodes of the popular police series Dixon of Dock Green ( The Bill of its day), but nothing like a breakthrough and I was forced to find other work just to make ends meet. I took on one job as a night porter at a small hotel in Victoria – easy money, I thought. The clientele was friendly – it was very popular with couples called Smith (Mr Smith was usually an American soldier) – and it meant I would be free during the day for auditions, should I ever be invited to any. As always, things weren’t quite as straightforward as that. One night I was settling down to my book as usual after escorting a group of very drunk punters and six tarts to their rooms, when an incredible racket broke out on the floor above. Each to his own, I thought and tried to ignore it, but after a bit