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Michael Caine has one of the longest-standing careers in Hollywood, but what is perhaps even more impressive is his 50-year marriage to his wife, Shakira Caine.
The Academy Award-winning actor first met Caine (née Baksh) in the 1970s and has said that it was love at first sight. The couple tied the knot in 1973 and welcomed their daughter that same year. They've been going strong ever since and are now proud grandparents.
"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."
In addition to their family life, the couple are also very supportive of each other's careers and Shakira has accompanied the Batman star to many of his premieres. But those days might be over for Michael, who told The Telegraph that his film The Great Escaper, which premieres in October 2023, is likely his last acting gig before retirement.
So, who is the woman who instantly stole Michael Caine's heart? Keep reading to learn more about his wife, Shakira Caine.
She was Miss Guyana
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When Shakira was 16, she quit school and began working as a secretary in a U.S. Information Service office in Guyana, as she told PEOPLE in 1976. The office was bombed leaving her eardrum ruptured and her cheek scarred. The incident led her to enter a beauty contest in hopes of being able to leave Guyana. "My main concern was just to get out," she said.
Shakira earned the title of Miss Guyana and went on to compete at the Miss World pageant in London, where was third runner-up. She eventually moved to England.
She's a former actress
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Shakira made her acting debut in 1969 in Carry on Again Doctor. In 1975, Shakira played Roxanne in The Man Who Would Be King, alongside her husband Michael, Sean Connery, Saeed Jaffrey and Christopher Plummer.
Michael got her number from an ad agency
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After seeing Shakira in a 1970s Maxwell House coffee commercial, Michael knew he had to meet her. A friend arranged a date and they've been together ever since.
"She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen," Michael told PEOPLE in 1976.
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."
She and Michael wed in Las Vegas in 1973
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On Jan. 8, 1973, Michael and Shakira got married in Las Vegas at the Candlelight Wedding Chapel.
"Oh we're so romantic," Michael later said of their marriage in a 2012 interview with The Mirror. "We go off on little honeymoons. Every now and again we go off to a lovely hotel called the George V in Paris and have a weekend honeymoon away from everybody."
They share a daughter and two grandchildren
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Michael and Shakira welcomed their daughter Natasha Caine in 1973.
"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...' "
They posed for the cover of PEOPLE in 1976
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In 1976, Michael and Shakira were featured on the cover of PEOPLE. In their cover story, the couple opened up about how they met, hosting dinner parties at their ornately decorated home and their working-class upbringings. "While I don't regret my past, I would not want to change the present," Michael shared. "When a man has got a missus like mine, you don't have to look in any other direction."
In his 2018 book, Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life, Michael shared that Shakira saved his life.
"I was never bombed on set, but I thought that a small vodka for breakfast was nothing to worry about, and in the early 1970s I was drinking two bottles of the stuff a day," he wrote. "By an immense stroke of good fortune, Shakira arrived in my life just in time. The empty feeling vanished and she got on my case. Then, to top it all, she got pregnant and I was given a second go at fatherhood, and soon I got myself straightened out. I gave up alcohol entirely for a year and now I never drink during the day, and with dinner it's just wine."
She travels with Michael for work
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While speaking to The Mirror, Michael said being on location can cause strain on a relationship. "If you go away on location for three months and your wife stays at home, you've made a whole new load of friends and she's made a whole new load of friends and you get home and you're kind of strangers," he explained. For the Caines, however, this isn't the case.
"My wife comes with me on all the movies, but she is not an appendage to a film star or anything like that," he continued. "She is the other half of me. Also, we're still very much in love with each other. We always have been, we always will be."
