How many Christopher Nolan movies has Michael Caine been in?
When you consider the great actor-director collaborations throughout the history of cinema, most of them began when the respective pairs were early in their careers. Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, John Ford and John Wayne, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni, and Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro all started working together when either one or both were not yet established.
In the case of Christopher Nolan and Michael Caine, however, it all started a bit later. Caine was already in his seventies when the director cast him in Batman Begins in 2005. He’d been a star since the ’60s, won two Oscars, and been nominated for four more, and his legacy seemed to be set in stone. When Nolan came along, however, all of that changed.
Caine played Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred, in all three Batman films, imbuing the character with the warmth and wisdom that only Caine could. He also appeared in 2006’s The Prestige, 2010’s Inception, 2014’s Interstellar, and 2020’s Tenet. At first glance, you might not know that the actor also appeared in 2017’s Dunkirk since only his voice is audible as a squadron leader who speaks to his pilots over their radios. Caine later explained that he hadn’t originally been in the film, but that Nolan had written the dialogue into the script at the last minute to make sure he was in the credits.
“Chris calls me his lucky charm,” Caine wrote in his memoir, Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, adding, “I feel that it’s more the other way: he is my lucky charm.” He described Nolan as perhaps the director with whom he has felt the most comfortable in his entire career.
In total, they’ve made eight films together since 2005, making Caine the actor who has appeared in the most Nolan films, even including Cillian Murphy.
What was Michael Caine’s last movie?
There is one conspicuous title missing from Caine and Nolan’s collaborations – 2024’s Oppenheimer. The star-studded cast is full of Nolan regulars, including Murphy and Gary Oldman, but Caine is not one of them.
After several years of mixed messaging, the actor announced his retirement in 2023, saying that he wasn’t interested in playing 90-year-old men. Sadly, this means that his nearly two-decade partnership with Nolan is at an end, but Caine insists that he was ready to step away from the spotlight on his own terms.
His last film (at least if we assume he’ll stick with his retirement) was 2023’s The Great Escaper, a feel-good comedy in which a World War II Navy veteran escapes from his care home to attend the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings in France. It received glowing reviews, and the actor felt that it was the perfect place to wrap things up.
“I keep saying I’m going to retire,” he told the BBC. “Well I am now, because I figured, I’ve had a picture which is — I played the lead and it’s got incredible reviews. The only parts I’m liable to get now are old men, 90-year-old men, and I thought well I might as well leave with all this. I’ve got wonderful reviews. What am I going to do to beat this?”
