Caine began his acting career at the age of 20 in Horsham, Sussex, when he responded to an advertisement in "The Stage" for an assistant stage manager who would also perform small walk-on parts for the Horsham-based Westminster Repertory Company who were performing at the Carfax Electric Theatre. Adopting the stage name "Michael White", in July 1953 he was cast as the drunkard Hindley in the Company's production of "Wuthering Heights". He moved to the Lowestoft Repertory Company in Suffolk for a year when he was 21. It was here that he met his first wife, Patricia Haines. He has described the first nine years of his career as "really, really brutal" as well as "more like purgatory than paradise". While in Lowestoft rep at the Arcadia Theatre (with Jackson Stanley's 'Standard Players') he appeared in nine plays.