The Dumbest Acting Mistake Michael Caine Ever Made

He's one of the last great movie stars still standing — but even legends screw up sometimes.

According to Caine himself, the dumbest mistake he ever made on a film set involved something as basic as lighting up a cigarette. During the filming of Alfie — the 1966 movie that turned him into a household name — Caine found out the hard way that continuity is not just a suggestion.

Here's what happened.

While filming a long shot, Caine spent the entire scene smoking. Fine. Except he didn't think about the fact that they'd also need to shoot a close-up. When the camera moved in for that tighter shot, he had no idea what to do with the cigarette. The result? Total disaster.

"There I was having done a long shot of a scene smoking a cigarette all the way through, and everything was fine until Lewis [Gilbert] said, 'OK, we are coming for the close up.' I still hadn't spotted the difficulty until shooting was underway, when the continuity girl called for the shot to be cut because my hand movements with the cigarette did not match those in the long – which of course was absolutely essential if the editor was going to be able to cut between the two shots."

And then it got worse:

"We did the shot over and over as I took a puff on the wrong line and then blew the smoke out on another wrong line. It became a nightmare and eventually took 15 takes to get the shot – a rarity on Alfie, where the majority of the shots in the film were take one, not because we were particularly brilliant, but because we had very little money, thus very little time. Needless to say, I never smoked in movies again."

That's right — 15 takes, all because of a cigarette. In a film where they usually had time and budget for one. And it was enough to make Caine swear off on-screen smoking for good.

It's a surprisingly human moment for someone who's basically cinema royalty. This is a guy who was mentored by Richard Burton and Stanley Baker — working-class actors who proved you didn't need to sound like you went to Eton to make it in British film. Caine credits Baker especially:

"He was the first tough British actor who could compete with American actors for butchness."

He also got a very different kind of lesson from John Wayne — not about acting, but about urinals:

"John Wayne said, 'Never wear suede shoes.' I said, 'Why not?' He said, 'Cause you're gonna be famous, and you're gonna be in the toilet taking a piss, and the guy next door to you is going to turn and recognise you and piss all over your shoes, kid.' I gave all my suede shoes away to people who were unknown."

And somewhere between being schooled by Hollywood icons and teaching younger actors like Aubrey Plaza how to nail a close-up, Caine still managed to screw up a basic continuity shot with a cigarette. A small mistake, sure — but one that haunted him more than some of his actual bad movies.

He never directed a blockbuster. He never tried to become the next Brando. But he did learn the most important lesson the hard way: never smoke on camera unless you really know what you're doing.

Or better yet — don't.