PERHAPS it’s due to his advancing years, or because he still thinks of himself as an inner- city boy with nothing to lose, but either way Sir Michael Caine is happy to be utterly candid.

Talking about everything from his pet-hates, UK taxes and box-office flops to all those remakes of his classic films, the 76-year-old actor Caine is as open as they come.

But it is Michael’s childhood which is currently the focus of public interest, as fans await the release of his latest film, Harry Brown.

Set on a council estate in South London’s Elephant & Castle, not far from where he grew up, Michael plays the eponymous hero – a widowed pensioner living in a concrete high-rise, who fights back when his only friend is murdered by a local gang.

“The film is a sort of wake-up call to people. I know what it’s like because I come from there, but for people who don’t know about it, we have now got into this circle of drugs and violence and killing which is quite extraordinary. And if you don’t do something about it, it’s coming to a street near you.”

Michael was born to a cook and a fish market porter and lived in a pre-fabricated council house, some 500 yards from the block of flats where he filmed Harry Brown.

“In that estate you see in the film, there’s a plaque on the wall with me on it, a sort of dedication to me. And the other person who comes from there is Charlie Chaplin, it’s me and Charlie,” he says, in that Cockney accent, which has made him such a success.

Any other actor might have been concerned filming night shoots in such a rough location, but Michael felt very much at home among the locals.

“I had an incredible experience there. I worked there for weeks at night, and of course I met all these guys and I became fascinated by them. They talked to me as an equal because I’m one of them. They talked to me in slang because they knew I’d understand.

“And I got a sense eventually that we had let these guys down. It’s all right to say, ‘These scumbags, they’re knifing, shooting, killing, selling drugs’, but they have no sense of direction whatsoever, they probably come from families where the father left, they play truant from school and have no discipline.

“If you’re a young man and you grow up in that atmosphere, you have to join a gang, otherwise you’re dead, or smashed to pieces if you walk around on your own.”

Back in the 1940s, when Michael was a teenager, things were very different.

“There was violence, but not the kind you see today. Our drugs were alcohol and our weapons were boots and fists. There were punch-ups, drunken fights, broken noses, you know, the occasional kick in the head, someone would die. They weren’t killed, they would die.

“I belonged to a gang,” he admits, “but we weren’t a gang of perpetrators, we were a gang of victims really, we were together to save ourselves. We were a gang of bloody comedians, about ten of the funniest guys I’ve ever met.

“I had a very tough father and a very tough brother and if anybody ever came to our house, they never came again,” he adds, with a smile.

“I remember once a bloke tried to break into our house. It was on the street in Elephant & Castle and looked like an easy target. We gave him a few whacks and called the police. And the policeman who came said, ‘He’s not in a bad way at all. Next time, delay the call to the police and give him a f****** good hiding’. That was when I was 14 You could hear them outside sometimes breaking into other people’s houses, but our house was not a good place to enter.”

For all the hardship of his early years, Michael remembers having two forms of escape, which helped to shape his future.

“One of them was the library, I’m still to this day an incessant reader, and the other was the cinema. If I liked a movie, I would go every day. You could just sit there all day. That was my escape.”