William Hall (1) (1935–2008)

Read this book as Caine has always been a quite popular actor and ‘personality’ in the UK and I thought he might have a quite interesting background. Unfortunately Caine comes across as a man obsessed with his working class cockney background and has a sizeable chip on his shoulder about it. He has a fairly inflated view of his acting ability, especially considering some of the awful films he has been in (Jaws 4!) but seems to offset this with the amount of money he has made. To be fair, show more this is a biography written by a friend of his, but I am not sure he has done him any favours as I came away thinking somewhat less of Michael Caine than when I started. show less

This was quite a good read and I enjoyed it. Norman Wisdom was born in poverty in the East End of London and became one of the most successful comedians of the 1950s and early 1960s…..and he made many funny movies. I don’t know how well known he was outside of the UK.