Do we like Michael Caine?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record with no harmful words found, one contested political vote, and a thinner trail of charity work than we'd like.
Caine grew up in Southwark, south London, and did his first acting in a local youth club. He later said the borough's honorary freedom in 2012 felt personal because of that childhood. The 1964 film Zulu, in which he played a posh officer, is the one he says made him a star.
The nearest thing to a stoush in recent years was over Zulu. A UK counter-terrorism research report linked the film to white nationalists, and Caine hit back with “That is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard.” That is a defence of his own film, not an attack on anyone, and nothing in it says he sympathises with extremists.
On the harm check, the record is quiet. He told Attitude that colleagues warned him in the late 1970s that playing a gay character would make people assume he was gay. He did it anyway, replying “They know I’m an actor.” We found nothing from him on trans people or the climate, and that is a real gap.
His most contested call is Brexit. He said he voted to leave because he would rather be “a poor master than a rich servant”, and he rejected the idea that the vote was about race or immigration. In 2021 he said he was now “very disappointed” in Boris Johnson, whom he had backed, but that he still backed leaving the EU. Where you land depends on whether you see that as a sovereignty argument or as cover for something nastier; his own words only support the first.
On Woody Allen, he told The Guardian in 2018 that he was shocked by the resurfaced molestation allegation from Dylan Farrow. He said he did not regret working with Allen but would not do so again. He is 93 now. He announced his retirement in 2023, then was reported by Variety in 2025 to be returning for a Last Witch Hunter sequel, with the deal not yet finalised then.
Honestly, the good-works list is thin in what we could verify. The freedom of Southwark is a real local honour for a bloke who never walked away from where he came from. Beyond that, we found a long run of film work and no sign of a feud, a suit or a scandal.