Jack O’Connell recalls spitting in Michael Caine’s face in movie scene

Sometimes spitting in the face of your elders can have unexpected results.

Sinners star Jack O’Connell recently recalled a supremely awkward moment with Michael Caine while responding to a fan question about the Oscar winner deeming him a “star of the future”— a title O’Connell thinks he earned after a very tough scene they shot together.

“Michael Caine had me tied up to a chair, interrogating me,” O’Connell said of filming the 2009 crime film Harry Brown with the legendary actor.

The actor explained that he suspects his saliva actually endeared him to the Italian Job star. “I had to spit in his face, which was massively daunting,” O’Connell remembered. “I think it was doing that that caused him to come out with [‘star of the future’].”

Caine’s surprising praise stayed with the Skins star. “I’ve not forgotten it,” he said. “It was totally mind-blowing for a 19-year-old to be working with someone like Michael Caine, a hugely important actor for young, working-class actors.”

Harry Brown saw Caine play an elderly veteran who seeks violent revenge on the London gang that murdered his friend. O’Connell portrayed one of the gang’s young members, along with Ben Drew, Jamie Downey, and Lee Oakes.

O’Connell also shared a wild memory from his days filming Angelina Jolie’s 2014 war drama, Unbroken. “I had to lose quite a bit of weight [to play the Olympic runner Louis Zamperini], so I was hunkering down in a hotel in Ascot, dieting and learning my lines,” he recalled. “Before we went off to shoot in Australia, Angelina wanted to meet my family, my nearest and dearest.”

Jolie didn’t drive to meet the O’Connells, though. “We got together somewhere on the outskirts of Derby that was rural enough to land a helicopter,” the actor said. “Everyone just buzzed off each other. My nana picked a moment during the meal to stand up to say a few words, in that way old-school nanas would, and I think that really stuck with [Jolie].”

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Later in his Guardian interview, O’Connell said it was “a dream come true” to work with Danny Boyle on the upcoming 28 Years Later, out June 20.

“Growing up, his work meant an enormous amount to me,” he said. “What his films have done for cinema, British cinema and culture, is hard to encapsulate. On set, I was all eyes and ears, absolutely beside myself. He’s there by the cameras, in the trenches. He’s not sat on some hilltop being fed blueberries. He’s among it and it’s all very immediate.”