Christopher Nolan has revealed the reason why his longtime collaborator Michael Caine didn’t appear in Oppenheimer.
The Oscar-nominated film took the box office by storm last year, and saw Cillian Murphy take on the role of the titular theoretical physicist who helped develop the first nuclear bomb.
The project marked Murphy’s sixth time working with the renowned director, and first time taking on the lead role following supporting slots in Batman Begins and Dunkirk.
However, Oppenheimer did not feature an appearance from another one of the director’s longtime collaborators: Michael Caine.
The London actor has featured in eight of his films including The Dark Knight, Inception, Dunkirk, The Prestige and Interstellar, and speaking at the British Film Institute chairman’s dinner, Nolan shed light on why he didn’t take on a role in the 2023 blockbuster.
Accepting the BFI Fellowship, Nolan explained that he was willing to have Caine in the movie, but the actor jokingly turned it down, saying: “OK, enough is enough” (via Variety).
Discussing his reaction to Caine sitting Oppenheimer out, Nolan said: “I had to go off on my own. OK, I haven’t got Michael Caine, I’d better get Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Kenneth Branagh, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Cillian Murphy, Tom Conti, and hoped that all those greats would add up to one Michael Caine.”
He later added: “So many people have helped me, so many people have been there for me, in so many different ways. I’m very moved to receive this, very moved by the presentation. This means the world to me.”
Caine’s first collaboration with Nolan took place in 2005, when he took on the role of Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred Pennyworth in Batman Begins. He later reprised the role in sequels The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
His latest appearance in one of Nolan’s films was in 2020’s Tenet, which also starred John David Washington and Robert Pattinson.
The actor has hinted before that the appearance in the film could mark his last with the British-American filmmaker and floated news of his retirement in various interviews.
First hinting at the topic in September, he said: “I am bloody 90 now, and I can’t walk properly and all that… I sort of am retired now.”
Shortly afterwards, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today that he had finally put the plan into motion. “I keep saying I’m going to retire. Well, I am now…The only parts I’m likely to get now are old men, 90-year-old men, maybe 85. And I thought, ‘Well, I might as well leave with all this — I’ve got wonderful reviews’,” he said, discussing his final film The Great Escaper.
“What have I got to do to beat this?’ You don’t have leading men at 90, you’re going to have young handsome boys and girls.”
In other Oppenheimer news, recently, leading man Cillian Murphy revealed that the director typically sends one of his family members to deliver top-secret film scripts to him.
“It’s been his mum who’s delivered the script to me before. Or his brother; he’ll go away and come back in three hours,” he explained.
“Part of it has to do with keeping the story secret before it goes out. But part of it has to do with tradition. They’ve always done it this way, so why stop now? It does add a ritual to it, which I really appreciate. It suits me.”