The actor Michael Caine was already middle aged when he found out a rather dark secret about his family. Every Sunday his mother would “go to church” or “visit a cousin” and she’d always insist on going alone. And it wasn’t until Caine was almost sixty himself that he discovered that his mother had an out-of-wedlock son.
The boy, Caine’s half-brother, had been born six years prior to the actor’s birth, when his mother had not yet married his father. His secret older brother suffered an accident in early childhood after which he was institutionalized. He also suffered from epilepsy, causing further damage and resulting in him being labeled mentally ill, even though the poor young man was fully lucid and aware of his surroundings.
When his mother died in 1989, Michael Caine found out about his half-brother… he began to visit him, too. And he was surprised to see that his brother had pictures of him as an actor, which his mother had given him — the brother he never knew about, knew about him, and was a devoted fan. David Burchell was his name. And Michael Caine did what he could for him, in his later years, trying to improve his conditions, his standards of living…
In 1991, David died and Michael Caine had his ashes buried with those of his mother. He reportedly wasn’t upset about his mother’s secret, later saying he “fully understood it”, being a young unmarried mother with a little disabled boy, she had no choice. Still, it’s crazy to think about her keeping a secret of such magnitude for sixty-plus years.
