Michael Caine

From FB:

“The son of a fish market porter and a cleaning lady, Caine left school at 15 and later fought in the Korean War for the British army. He struggled in roles in mostly forgettable films and stage plays until the 1960s, when his performance as the swinging London lothario in the 1966 blockbuster Alfie resulted in an Academy Award nomination and vaulted him into the ranks of filmdom’s bold-faced names, where he’s remained ever since. That delay, he thinks, has kept him on an even keel and out of the tabloids during his career.

“I was a very, very fully grown, very tough guy from a very tough background,” he says of his age, 29, when he achieved success. “I’d been a soldier [in Korea] and there weren’t many fairy tales you could tell me that I was going to believe.”