Get Carter with Michael Caine

Mike Hodges was surprised that a star of Michael Caine's stature would want to play such a thoroughly unlikeable person as Carter. Giving his reasons for wanting to be involved with the film the actor said:

One of the reasons I wanted to make that picture was my background. In English movies, gangsters were either stupid or funny. I wanted to show that they're neither. Gangsters are not stupid, and they're certainly not very funny.

He identified with Carter as a memory of his working class upbringing, having friends and family members who were involved in crime and felt Carter represented a path his life might have taken under different circumstances: "Carter is the dead-end product of my own environment, my childhood; I know him well. He is the ghost of Michael Caine".