Sir Michael Caine asked to have the "C-word" cut from 'King of Thieves'.

Sir Michael Caine

Sir Michael Caine

The 85-year-old legendary actor may have played a mixture of characters on screen over the years but he has admitted he's never been asked to swear until he bagged the role of Brian Reader in the forthcoming crime film.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper, he said: "That was the first time I have used the C-word in a film. I tried to get them to cut it, but they didn't.

"I didn't feel comfortable with it. I never swear in films. If you tread on my foot in real life, I will swear. I am the son of a Billingsgate fish porter, so I grew up hearing it. But I would never use that word."

'King of Thieves follows the story of the Hatton Garden heist, where £14 million was stolen in London's jewellery quarter when seven elderly culprits - who had a combined age of 448 - drilled a hole into the wall of a vault in 2015.

As soon as Caine discovered the ages of the thieves, he knew he would be asked to star in the movie, but Reader's daughter didn't think he was posh enough.

He explained: "She thought I was too common when she was told I was going to play her dad. I found out he'd married a woman from Dulwich, South London, which is a bit posh, and I figured he'd changed his accent to make it more posh according to where he lived. So he was an understandable Cockney. And that was me. My own accent. It was very easy for me."

The movie, which also stars Ray Winstone, Paul Whitehouse, Jim Broadbent, Sir Michael Gambon and Sir Tom Courtenay, has already been accused of glamourising crime and making a mockery out of the people who lost their cash.

Caine said: "People have heard this is a comedy about a bank robbery and they thought, 'I lost money in the thing'. People did lose money.

"They were old men doing this job people thought they couldn't do and when people saw them doing it, they thought it was funny. The robbers didn't think it was funny. They thought they were going to make a lot of money."

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