One of my many and varied excuses for not blogging here more — despite the hopefully temporary demise suspension of my fun, twice-weekly attempts at box-office prognostication over at Premium Hollywood — is that I’m doing a series of lengthy backwards glances at the careers of some acting living legends for the proprietors of that site.

Coming soon is a look at some of the lesser known (well, if you’re here, perhaps not to you) films of Michael Caine, which involved me watching/rewatching a pretty huge portion of his work. I admired him greatly before starting on the project, but now I’m pretty much in full worship mode.

I’m now fully in awe of his onscreen brilliance and the craftsmanlike humility and thoughtfulness of his approach, epitomized in a single aphorism of his: “The work is the rehearsal and the performance is the relaxation.” I’m also in awe of the actual human being who really has endured some extraordinary stuff (severe poverty and crime in his native London, serious action in the Korean war, etc.) and has come out of it as a good family man (Michael and Shakira Caine, who he fell for immediately after seeing here on a TV commercial, have been married for thirty-five years) and the fun but wise grandfather we’d all like to have; and that’s no knock on my actual grandfather, who was fairly cool himself. No wonder, aside from his searing work in films like The Quiet American, he’s emerged recently as the most lovable of movie surrogate dads, from his tragicomic turn in Children of Men to his role as the screen’s greatest Alfred “the Butler” Pennyworth; and that’s no knock on either Hammer Studios mainstay Michael Gough, or the late Alan Napier, both fairly great themselves.

Just watch this great TCM interview (the first of two parts) from a few years back. The best part: Michael Caine loves movies as much as you do. Maybe more.