Michael Caine adds two major trophies to his collection this year: Best Supporting Actor at the 72nd Academy Awards in March (for his role in The Cider House Rules) and the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award in September at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in March 1933 in London, Michael Caine went through small jobs before landing parts in little-noticed British adventure movies. He first attracted attention in the role of a young officer in Cy Endfield's Zulu (1964). Alfie (1966) brought him a wide recognition and his first nomination for Academy Awards as Best Actor.

In 1972, Joseph Mankiewicz's Sleuth gave him the opportunity to play opposite stage legend Laurence Olivier, an experience he recalls with a devastating sense of humour : "Olivier was one of the greatest theatre actors in the history of theatre. I was kind of fearful of him, because he was such a giant actor. On the first day of working, I realized that we were in MY medium, which is film, not his. Then he was fired from his job at the National Theatre in England ; he started to take valium, so he could not remember his lines for a week until he stopped taking them. So during that time, I took full advantage of this, putting him to the ground as much as possible, and then ducked when he came back at me."

"The greatest compliment I ever received as an actor was one day, during a big scene where we were going at each other - he's really like a whirlwind, a hurricane, he suddenly comes out of nowhere, you're standing in the doorway and the house is gone. When we finished the scene, he said to me "I thought I had an employee here, I see I have a partner."

And I said: "I can't blow you away, but let me tell you this : you aren't going to blow me away either. I am going to stand here."

And he said: "What a wonderful idea, Michael : you do that." And we became quite good friends."

In 1973, Michael Caine married Shakira Baksh, an exotic former Miss Guyana finalist who co-starred two years later in The Man Who Would be King. "I have been married for 27 years to the same woman" he muses. "I realized that if I was ever going to get married, there would have to be someone at home more beautiful than anyone. And the woman I did marry is that. She's not just beautiful in the face, she is also beautiful behind the face, she' s a wonderful person. I feel very fortunate. I am not very beautiful as you can see, and I'm not all nice behind this face. I am quite tough to live with. But she loves me enough to do it, and the miracle is that if I stayed with her for 27 years, it's because SHE stayed with me for 27 years".

To movie-goers of all age he is a wonderfully prolific role-catcher, capable of being, for instance, a transvestite killer in Body Double, a cursed amputated writer (The Hand by Oliver Stone), a crime boss (Mona Lisa), a husband in Woody Allen's perturbed family (Hannah and her Sisters), a true-to-life Scrooge (The Muppets' Christmas Carol), a shark hunter (Jaws: the Revenge)... Although he did not always choose his films for art's sake, Michael Caine always delivered strong and poignant performances which have landed him 3 nominations for Academy Awards as Best Actor (Alfie, Sleuth in 1972 and Educating Rita in 1983). He won the Oscar for his supporting role in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and a Golden Globe for Best Actor in Little Voice (1998). In March 2000 he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Wilbur the obstetrician in Lasse Hallstrom's Cider House Rules.

For him, this role was tinged by a strong autobiographical vein: "I started to train for this part unconsciously many years ago when I was a little boy. I was evacuated from London during the war, sent outside into the country. I was sent only for 6 weeks to strangers and I was not treated very well. So I completely understand and have a great compassion for children, and a great abhorrence for any cruelty to children. When I came to play the doctor in this film, I knew exactly what the children expected of me as a kind person because I was still that child anyway. I saw a metaphor in King Kong, the film which they always watch.

His latest film, John Irving's Shiner, will serve as a framework for the Michael Caine tribute. To be screened at a special Official Section showing, Shiner is the tale of a man who puts all his hopes of becoming a millionaire on the career of his son, a young and promising boxer. But things become complicated for them both... At the festival he will be honored with the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award -- one of which he is certainly deserving.