Sir Michael Caine reveals the strange way he met his wife
Love works in mysterious ways, even for Sir Michael Caine.
The veteran actor has revealed how he met and fell in love with his wife of 46 years, Shakira, on Andrew Denton’s Interview show.
The 86-year-old said, he was watching TV at home with a friend when a Maxwell House Coffee commercial came on screen. Caine was entranced by the woman in the ad, which was set in Brazil.
“I had plenty of money. I said to my mate, ‘We’re going to Brazil tomorrow, I gotta find her’,” he recalled.
Caine and his friend then went to a bar, where he shared his spur-of-the-moment plan with another patron.
“I said, ‘Well, I was watching television, and I saw this girl in an advert, and I’m going to Brazil in the morning to find her,’” Caine told Denton.
“He said, ‘Really? What commercial?’ I said, ‘Maxwell House Coffee’.
“He said, ‘We make that commercial … She’s not in Brazil, she’s in Fulham Road’.”
"We're going to Brazil tomorrow, I've gotta find her." - Michael Caine met his wife of 46 years via a fairly non-traditional means. He saw her in a coffee TV ad and fell in love. #InterviewAU pic.twitter.com/K6CsRWL6MJ
— Andrew Denton's "Interview" (@InterviewAU) June 11, 2019
It turned out that the woman lived less than two kilometres away. Caine went on to track her phone number and ask her out.
“I phoned her 11 times, 10 of which she wouldn’t go out with me,” Caine said.
“The last one she decided to go out with me … We went out and fell in love instantly and have never parted since.”
Shakira, 72, is a Guyanese-British actress and model. She and Caine tied the knot in Las Vegas in 1973, two years after their first meeting. The pair has a daughter named Natasha.