Michael Caine On Playing The Anti-James Bond in "Ipcress"

The Times of London has a sweet anecdote by Michael Caine about getting the lead as a mousy, realistic spy -- 003 1/2 joked one review -- in "The Ipcress Files." One typical moment:

Sidney Furie, the director, came to me and said: “I’ll tell you what I think of this script, have you got any matches?” and he burnt the script on the floor of the studio at Pinewood. This was meant to be the start of my big-time movie career and nobody liked the script.