Michael Caine has claimed he has an unlikely fan – Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
The Oscar-winning actor revealed the warmongering tyrant loved him in the movie Funeral in Berlin.
Sir Michael, 91, said: “You might know that Vladimir Putin was working undercover for the KGB in East Germany in the late Eighties?
READ MORE: Michael Caine, 90, ends retirement after being booked for huge new Netflix series
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“Well, someone told me they had dinner with Putin some years ago and my name and the movie Funeral in Berlin came up.
(Image: SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
“And Putin said, ‘Tell him I saw the film, and I thought it was very funny.’
“It was odd to think of Putin watching a movie I made back in the Sixties! Even odder now, after all that’s happened.
“But movies do that – 60 years after you’ve made it, they still have a life and people will come up and say, ‘Oh, we loved you in Funeral in Berlin or The Italian Job or Alfie’ – or whatever is their favourite. You move on, but the film doesn’t.”
(Image: © Jim Henson Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Sir Michael has brought out a new book called Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over in which he discusses his life and career and hands out lessons he has learned.
He added: “The idea that something I made that long ago might mean something to a 20-year-old today… you never think about it when you’re making a movie, but now I see it, I find it humbling and exciting at the same time.
“None of us gave a second thought to the idea that what we were doing might mean something to future generations. But now that it does, it means a lot to me, too.”
(Image: Getty Images)
“It was odd being back in Berlin, because I’d been there for my National Service. Of course, it had changed a lot – West Germany was doing quite well by then, with all the reconstruction.
“But it was very tough, too, because of the Wall and the division of the city between East and West. I mean, people were shot in no-man’s-land trying to escape from the communist side. There were guns everywhere.
“You didn’t want to dwell on it too much, but it was there at the back of your mind all the time. The risk of nuclear war, all that. Berlin really brought it home to me.”
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