John Wayne Taught Michael Caine How to Avoid Fan Pee, and 5 Other Things We Learned

Michael Caine in New York on Sunday (Photo: Matthew Arnold)

At 82 years old, Michael Caine is the keeper of some of Hollywood’s best stories from decades past. The Dark Knight star has had a long, fruitful career since getting his big break playing an inveterate ladies’ man in the 1966 comedy Alfie. Caine regaled a New York City audience with a treasure trove of stories on Sunday during a talk hosted by The New York Times and BAFTA. Here are the six best:

1. John Wayne’s No. 1 fashion tipWhen Caine first got to Hollywood following the success of Alfie, he stayed in the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he ran into a dusty John Wayne, who’d just stepped off a helicopter. Wayne recognized the young English actor and felt the need to give him some key advice (as Caine recalled): “Never wear suede shoes… You’re going to be very famous and you’ll be going in the toilet taking a pee, there’ll be a guy next to you, and he’s gonna [turn to you and] say, ‘Michael Caine!’ And he’s gonna pee all over your shoes.”

2. John Huston, directionless directorOne day while working with two-time Oscar-winning director John Huston, Caine asked why Huston wasn’t giving Caine more notes on his peformance. Huston told the actor: “You get paid a great deal of money to do this, you don’t need [direction].”

3. How Caine facilitated Peter Sellers’s breakup with Liza MinnelliCaine took a Polaroid of then-couple Sellers and Minnelli one day when they visited his house. The very next day he was at a star-studded party, and news of Sellers and Minnelli’s breakup was already making headlines. Minnelli was at the party and told Caine how it went down: “She gave me the photo I took, I turn it over and it says [in Sellers’s handwriting], 'Thanks for the memory.’”

4. Charlize Theron at her unsexiestTheron and Caine appeared in the 1999 drama The Cider House Rules, for which Caine won his second Oscar. Playing an obstetrician, Caine recounted how he was really nervous about one scene where his character performed a gynecological examination on the actress. “I thought, 'How are we going to do this? This is going to be so embarrassing.’ And then we did it and she opened her legs and she had on a pair of old man’s underpants — the most unsexy thing you’ve ever seen.”

5. The downside of a 17-and-a-half-minute ovationCaine recalled how he and colleagues from the upcoming film Youth got a standing ovation that exceeded 17 minutes. “Which, by the way is very difficult because you don’t know what to do,” Caine explained. “We stood there… and then I became fascinated by about 20 people who were booing us. I thought, 'Oh we’re not a complete success.’”

6. On making out with SupermanCaine and Christopher Reeve had to kiss in a scene in the 1982 crime comedy Deathtrap. Says the actor, “I can always boast I’m one of the few men in the world who kissed Superman. What we did is we got so drunk we forgot our lines… I said, 'Chris, you’re bigger than me but if you put your tongue down my throat I’ll kill you.’”