Michael Caine was almost 60 years old when he discovered that his mother was hiding a secret that would change his life.

The actor, now 91, only learned the decades-old secret after his mother, Ellen Burchell, died in 1989.

In 2002, Caine appeared on Michael Parkinson’s talk show, Parkinson, where he spoke about the secret his mother kept from him, his younger brother Stanley, and his father throughout their lives.

The Dark Knight star explained how the truth was revealed when an article was being written about the state of mental health facilities in England.

While a journalist was talking to residents of a facility, one of them claimed that her boyfriend was Caine’s brother.

“You see that man over there, he’s Michael Caine’s brother,” he allegedly said.

Caine was immediately contacted by the newspaper, who told him he had a secret brother and warned him that the story would publish that weekend.

“I went to see him to see if he was okay,” Caine told the veteran host.

The Hollywood star discovered that her mother had given birth to a son out of wedlock, six years before she married Caine’s father, Maurice Joseph Micklewhite.

Caine told the Belfast Telegraph: “She obviously had an affair and didn’t meet my father until… (later). And then she hid the child.”

“What happened was that he was born well, but medically they treated him badly and something went wrong. My mother kept his secret for 30 years. She went every week and visited him and none of us ever found out. My dad didn’t know anything about this. what.”

The boy, named David, was placed in foster care and was sadly left disabled after suffering an epileptic seizure. Due to his condition, David was considered mentally ill and spent his years institutionalized in a hospital.

Every Monday during his childhood, Caine and his brother would visit their aunt while their mother went shopping. However, Caine realized this was a lie and actually visited his secret son every week until he died.

“I was absolutely amazed at how he fooled us all for 50 years, every Monday,” Caine said. David learned he had a famous brother after Burchell gave him a photograph of Caine as Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in the 1964 war film Zulu.

Unfortunately, David passed away just 18 months after Caine met him.

In his autobiography, Caine wrote: “There was nothing that Mother did not do for her children, but perhaps it was also because there was one child for whom she had not been able to do much.”