Caine’s work ethic

Michael Caine fully admits that he’s made a lot of terrible movies, said Tanya Gold in The Sunday Times (U.K.). The British actor made his Hollywood debut in the 1978 flop The Swarm, a lousy film about a plague of killer bees descending on Houston. “I didn’t even bother to read the script,” he admits. “What we did was make a special-effects film about bees attacking everyone. And the special effects didn’t work. If I made a movie like The Swarm, I’d make three [other films] very quickly before it came out so I always survived failure—because I had a hit.” Then there was 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge, in which the shark somehow pursues a family to the Bahamas. “People said, ‘Why did you do Jaws 4?’ They paid me $1 million for 10 days. I come from a very poor background, so I wanted to do everything for everyone. Every one of my family got a house. That was the attitude I had. I’m either going to get the Academy Award or I’m going to make a lot of money.” Caine, 80, is now reading another film script, and doesn’t plan to retire any time soon. “If you retire you’re saying, ‘I’ve given up. I’m going to sit here and what am I going to do now? I’ll tell you what—I’m going to die.’”

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