At 90, while Michael Caine still remains a legend in the eyes of cinema lovers, no matter the generation they belong to, The Dark Knight star has taken the decision to finally bid the stage of acting his final farewell. So, what will the soon-to-be-retired actor do next in life? Well, he has always been a man of action and certainly has plans for the future, but at the moment, done filming the last film of his career, he is “very happy” with his wife, Shakira Caine.
While Caine’s professional life took years to properly take off back in the 1950s, his love story with Shakira Baksh happened in just eight minutes! Yep, it was love at first sight for the actor after he saw Shakira in a 1970s Maxwell House coffee commercial.
“I fell in love with her in about eight minutes,” Caine shared with Radio Times. “It took her two hours to fall in love with me.”
For the former actress, Caine was the exact opposite of what she expected him to be like.
“He was everything I didn’t expect. I had just seen him in Get Carter and he seemed so aggressive and ruthless. Instead, I found him charming and very gentle, someone whom I’d like to spend part of my life with.”
But for the Get Carter actor, Shakira was “the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen,” as per his 1976 interview with People.
Who is Shakira Caine?
At the young age of 16, Shakira began working as a secretary in the U.S. consulate in present-day Guyana. But after terrorists bombed the place, leaving her with a burst eardrum and a scar that stretched from her cheek to her ear, Shakira entered a beauty contest and emerged as Miss Guyana.
From there, she went on to participate in the Miss World Pageant, where she came in third. But neither was she fazed by the fact that she didn’t come first nor were those who wanted to cast the Indo-Guyanese model in TV ads and films like Some Girls Do, Carry On Again Doctor, Son of Dracula, The Man Who Would Be King (alongside her husband,), etc.
Caine and Shakira (who is 14 years his junior) got married in 1973 and have been together — give me a minute to do the math — for 50 years. Wow, given the speed at which celebrity marriages have been taking the final bow recently, this is monumental. The couple has one daughter, Natasha Caine, born in 1973, and are proud grandparents to three grandchildren.