Free The Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine Page A

I realised it was serious. One of the girls was being beaten up – and she didn’t like it. With all the panache of my hero Humphrey Bogart, I rushed upstairs, shouldered the door down (it wasn’t actually locked), hauled the guy off the girl and knocked him out. I was just putting the finishing touches to my knight in shining armour role by helping the girl – who was very frightened – back into her clothes and calming her down, when a bottle smashed down on my head and put me out cold. I’d forgotten about the guy’s five friends, who were sober enough now, and they proceeded to kick the shit out of me. It’s a funny old world, though. The son of that hotel owner is Barry Krost, whose first claim to fame was as the young Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1952 John Huston biopic about the artist, Moulin Rouge ; he is now a Hollywood agent and great friend of mine – in fact he put together the deal to make Get Carter . You just can’t tell how things are going to work out, can you?
    Still no jobs, and with the unexpected and tragic death during a routine operation of my lovely and persistent agent Josephine Burton, I had lost one of the few professionals who really believed in me. My new agent, Pat Larthe, seemed to be having just as much trouble getting me the break and indeed unwittingly nearly pushed me to the very edge of despair. Initially, her news sounded so good. She had managed to get me an interview with Robert Lennard, the chief casting director of Associated British Pictures, one of the biggest movie companies in Britain at the time, which had a number of actors under contract.  A contract would mean a regular income and maybe a chance to pay off some of the money I owed. I knew exactly how my mum had felt all those years ago when the debt collectors came to call – I was constantly dodging across the street to avoid my creditors and, even more worryingly, had by now fallen behind with my maintenance payments for Dominique. Mr Lennard seemed a kind man, but he had a bleak message for me. He told me it was a tough business. Hardly news to me. He then said, ‘You will thank me for this in the long run, but I know this business well and believe me, Michael, you have no future in it at all.’ I sat there, trying to remain calm, but inside I was seething with fury. ‘Thank you for the advice, Mr Lennard,’ I managed to say politely and left before I thumped him. On the way back I became angrier and angrier – and it was this that saved me from complete despair. I was going to try even harder; no one was going to tell me what I could and couldn’t do.
    Mr Lennard, as it happened, turned out not to have the sharpest eye in the business. I wasn’t the only actor finding it tough; the others who used to hang out with me waiting for work around this time included Sean Connery, Richard Harris, Terence Stamp, Peter O’Toole and Albert Finney. And all this while Mr Lennard had dozens of people under contract whose names are entirely absent from the annals of movie history. Despite his advice, I picked myself up, yet again, and kept on going, surviving on the odd small part. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that some of my friends were beginning to get the odd big part. Sean Connery, for instance, who had originally been discovered in a gym by a casting director looking for some slightly more convincing American sailors than the usual British chorus line for South Pacific , had got the lead role in the TV play Requiem for a Heavyweight . I came on in the last scene. Then my friend Eddie Judd got the starring role in the film The Day the Earth Caught Fire ; I played the policeman – and I didn’t even manage that very well. And Albert Finney, playing opposite the legendary Charles Laughton in The Party , was receiving rave notices for his performance – and rightly so. Meanwhile, I’d hit a new low. I turned up at one film audition, was called in, opened the door and the casting director shouted, ‘Next!’