page_title: Michael Caine
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Caine / Acting career / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Michael Caine in trailer to "Get Carter" (1971)
context_page_description: Sir Michael Caine CBE is an English actor, producer, and author. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 130 films during a career spanning over 60 years, and is considered a British film icon. As of February 2017, the films in which he has appeared in have grossed over $7.8 billion worldwide. He is ranked at No. 20 on the list of highest-grossing box office stars.
  Caine made his breakthrough in the 1960s with starring roles in British films such as Zulu, The Ipcress File, Alfie, The Italian Job, and Battle of Britain. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Alfie. His roles in the 1970s included Get Carter, The Last Valley, Sleuth, The Man Who Would Be King, and A Bridge Too Far. He earned his second Academy Award nomination for Sleuth and went on to achieve some of his greatest critical success in the 1980s, with Educating Rita earning him the BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Hannah and Her Sisters.
  Caine played Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol.
context_section_description: After working on The Italian Job with Noël Coward, and a solid role as RAF fighter pilot squadron leader Canfield in the all-star cast of Battle of Britain (both 1969), Caine played the lead in Get Carter (1971), a British gangster film. Caine was busy with successes including Sleuth (1972) opposite Laurence Olivier, and John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975) co-starring Sean Connery which received widespread acclaim. The Times applauded the "lovely double act of Caine and Connery, clowning to their doom", while Huston paid tribute to Caine's improvisation as an actor: "Michael is one of the most intelligent men among the artists I've known. I don't particularly care to throw the ball to an actor and let him improvise, but with Michael it's different. I just let him get on with it."
  In 1976 he appeared in the screen adaptation by Tom Mankiewicz of the Jack Higgins novel The Eagle Has Landed as Oberst (Colonel) Kurt Steiner, the commander of a Luftwaffe paratroop unit disguised as Polish paratroopers, whose mission was to kidnap or kill the then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, alongside co-stars Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter and Donald Pleasence. Subsequently, in 1978, he starred in The Silver Bears, an adaptation of Paul Erdman's (1974) novel of the same name. Caine also was part of an all-star cast in A Bridge Too Far (1977).
caption: Michael Caine in the trailer for Get Carter (1971)
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