Michael Caine, 90, Fell in Love With His Wife of 50 Years in Just 8 Minutes | “Most Beautiful Girl I’d Ever Seen”

"I just watched her and I thought, 'That is the woman for me'," Caine recalled about seeing his wife in an ad.

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | (L) Photo by Keystone | Hulton Archive (R) Photo by Pascal Le Segretain

By Shruti Menon

March 29, 2023

Posted March 29, 2023

Iconic actor Michael Caine celebrated his 90th birthday in London on March 14, 2023. The celebratory dinner included not just Caine's wife of 50 years, Shakira Caine, but also Top Gun: Maverick star, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible writer, Chris McQuarrie, and Britain's Got Talent judge, David Walliams. "Happy 90th Birthday to the legendary Sir Michael Caine," Walliams captioned a selection of photos from the celebrations posted on Instagram.

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Caine married his current spouse, Shakira Caine, over half a century ago! The two-time Academy Award winner said that it was love at first sight. In fact, he was struck by Cupid's arrow in just 8 minutes! "I fell in love with her in about eight minutes," Michael told the Radio Times in 2018. "It took her two hours to fall in love with me." The Dark Knight actor, a father of one, instantly fell in love with Shakira after divorcing his first wife.

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | (L) Hulton Archive; (R) Nicholas Hunt — Image Source: Getty Images | (L) Hulton Archive; (R) Nicholas Hunt

On The Jonathan Ross Show, he revealed to the host that he first fell in love when he spotted his wife, in a television advertisement. After seeing the poster, he decided to search for her in Brazil the following morning. "It was a commercial for coffee in Brazil, and I was with one of my best mates and for the first time in years, we were watching television. We just had a night at the disco and I just watched her and I thought, 'That is the woman for me.' I said to my mate, 'We are going to Brazil in the morning, we are going to find her'," he said.

"She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen," Michael told PEOPLE in 1976. A friend from the ad agency arranged a date and the pair have been together ever since. Shakira added, "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."

The couple tied the knot in 1973 and welcomed their daughter that same year. The two have been going strong ever since and are now proud grandparents, per PEOPLE. "I'm a big family man. I've got two grandsons … and I love 'em to bits," Caine told the Radio Times. "I became a bit of a hero to them. I was watching cartoons with the eldest and a trailer for one of the Batman films came on and there's me with Batman. He said, 'Do you know Batman?' I said casually, 'Yeah, he's a friend of mine'."