Michael Caine is ‘sort of’ retired: I’m ‘f—ing 90’

Cue the “Dark Knight Rises” soundtrack. Michael Caine has most likely just wrapped the final film of his career. The English actor made the revelation during a recent interview with The Telegraph.

“I sort of am retired now,” he said, although he previously said he would bow out but continued to return to the screen. “But I wasn’t 90 then. I am bloody 90 now, and I can’t walk properly and all that.”

Caine plays Bernard Jordan in his latest, “The Great Escaper,” a World War II veteran who escapes from his care home to attend the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings in France. It hits UK theaters on Oct. 6.

“I thought he was incredible, and it’s so beautifully written,” he said of why he joined the cast. “With Covid and all that, I hadn’t done a picture for three years, and I thought I was finished. And I suddenly did it – and had such a wonderful time.”

The legendary actor noted that the team gave him a “very good walking stick” when he filmed, as he can no longer walk without one.

“I’d just do them once, and then fall over,” he added. “But just one take, and that’s it. Forget it.”

The Oscar winner previously teased a possible retirement in 2021, claiming at the time that his movie “Best Sellers” would be his “last part.”

“Because I haven’t worked for two years, and I have a spine problem, which affects my legs. So, I can’t walk very well. There aren’t exactly scripts pouring out with a leading man who’s 88,” he said on BBC Radio show Kermode at the time.

Caine began acting in the ’50s, with his film debut in 1956’s “A Hill in Korea.” He went on to be nominated for six Oscars, winning Best Supporting Actor for the 1986 film “Hannah and Her Sisters” and in 1999 for “The Cider House Rules.” Some of his biggest roles include “Miss Congeniality,” “Alfie,” “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” “Interstellar,” and playing Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, “Batman Begins” (2005), “The Dark Knight” (2008) and “The Dark Knight Rises” (2012).

Away from public life, Caine and his wife, Shakira, recently downsized and bought a house in Wimbledon, as Caine began to find it difficult to walk around his eight-acre country home in Surrey. Luckily, their new residence is closer to their family and three grandchildren.