Calderón was born into a wealthy and politically active family, her father being a strong supporter of Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party. After a conventional upbringing and education in Puerto Rico, she attended Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1964. In 1972 she was awarded a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Puerto Rico.

When Luis Silva Recio, a former professor of Calderón, was chosen Puerto Rico’s secretary of labour in 1973, she became his executive assistant in the administration of Governor Rafael Hernández Colón. When Hernández Colón returned to the governorship in 1985, he appointed Calderón his chief of staff. She later served as secretary of the interior and secretary of state. Calderón also gained extensive experience in the private sector as a vice president of Citibank in Puerto Rico and as president of an investment company.

In 1996 Calderón was elected mayor of San Juan, and she was subsequently chosen leader of the Popular Democratic Party. In the 1998 referendum on Puerto Rican statehood organized by pro-statehood governor Pedro Rosselló, she led the pro-commonwealth campaign; her efforts were rewarded when the majority of votes were cast in favour of commonwealth status. In her campaign for governor in 2000, Calderón promised to root out corruption and end the U.S. Navy’s bombing of Vieques, a large island off the east coast of the main island of Puerto Rico that had been used for naval exercises since 1941. Calderón’s strong antibombing stance—together with the killing of a security officer by an errant bomb in 1999 and the island’s alarmingly high cancer rate (which many attributed to the exercises)—helped her to win by a narrow margin, and in 2001 she was sworn in as the commonwealth’s first woman governor. Her election was considered a setback for proponents of Puerto Rican statehood.

Despite U.S. President Bill Clinton’s offer to hold a referendum on continuing to use Vieques for U.S. naval exercises, Calderón vowed immediately after her inauguration to accelerate efforts to end the bombing of the island. In April 2001 she sued the U.S. government on the basis of the Noise Control Act of 1972, but the suit was dismissed the following year. In a nonbinding referendum held in July 2001—despite the announcement by U.S. President George W. Bush that the bombing would be permanently halted within two years—more than two-thirds of Vieques residents voted in favour of ending the exercises immediately, a result viewed as a significant victory for Calderón. She announced in 2003 that she would not run for reelection, and she left office in 2005.

The former Maurice Micklewhite took his screen name from the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny. Caine entered motion pictures in 1956 and played a variety of roles in such British productions as A Hill in Korea (1956), How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), and Zulu (1964). Success came with The Ipcress File (1965)—the first of four films in which Caine portrayed British spy Harry Palmer—but his real breakthrough was in the title role of Alfie (1966), for which he received an Oscar nomination as best actor. His other successful films of the 1960s include Funeral in Berlin (1966), Gambit (1966), The Wrong Box (1966), Hurry Sundown (1967), and The Italian Job (1969).

In these early films, Caine established himself as a versatile actor whose everyman qualities were well suited to a variety of roles. His cool urbanity is perhaps the only constant among performances that include cynical secret agents, gregarious playboys, rugged adventurers, refined gentlemen, humble schoolteachers, and psychotic killers. His star quality is not sacrificed for such versatility, and he retains his affable Cockney persona in most roles. He is especially deft at light comedy and usually manages to reveal subtly humorous elements within a given screenplay.

By the 1970s Caine had achieved international stardom. He appeared in the cult classic Get Carter (1971) and received another best actor Oscar nomination for Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Sleuth (1972). He followed these successes with such popular films as John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and John Sturges’s The Eagle Has Landed (1976). He continued his prodigious output during the 1980s, appearing in some two dozen films during the decade. Though many of these films were dismal failures, Caine’s reputation did not suffer, because he had garnered respect for being such a tireless workhorse. “I didn’t go in search of some of my more questionable films,” he once said, “I was always on the lookout for the great roles. When they weren’t offered to me, I’d look for the good ones and when those passed me by, I’d take the ones that would pay the rent.” His better films of the 1980s include Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980), Deathtrap (1982), Educating Rita (1983; best actor Oscar nomination), Mona Lisa (1986), Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986; Academy Award for best supporting actor), Without a Clue (1988), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988). By the end of the 20th century, Caine had appeared in more than 100 films. He won his second best-supporting-actor Oscar for The Cider House Rules (1999) and was nominated as best actor for his performance as a conflicted British journalist in Vietnam in The Quiet American (2002).

Caine has authored two best-selling books: Acting in Film (1987) is considered an invaluable resource for actors, and his autobiography, What’s It All About? (1993), is noted for its raconteurish charm. Also in 1993, Caine was made Commander of the British Empire, and he was knighted in 2000.