Family secrets can either tear a family apart or bring the members closer together. For acting legend Michael Caine, the discovery of a shocking family secret revealed after his mother’s death, helped him better understand the woman he thought he knew everything about.

The Zulu star was almost 60 when a reporter writing on the state of mental health facilities in the UK revealed the shocking secret that his mother had kept from his father, himself and his younger brother Stanley their whole lives.

Cain, 91, revealed all when during an episode of chat show Parkinson, explained he learned he had a secret brother and warned that the story would be running that weekend.

The secret came out after a resident at one facility told the reporter her boyfriend was Michael Caine’s brother.

“I went to go see him, to see if he was alright,” Caine told Michael Parkinson.

Speaking later on to the Belfast Telegraph the acting legend explained that his mother had given birth to a child out of wedlock, six years before she married Caine’s father, Maurice Joseph Micklewhite.

“She obviously had an affair, and she didn’t meet my father until… (later). And so she hid the boy,” he told the outlet.

“What happened was, he was born okay, but medically he was treated badly and something went wrong. My mother kept her secret for 30 years.

“She went every week and visited him and none of us never knew. My dad knew nothing about this whatsoever.”

The boy, named David, was put into foster care but became disabled after experiencing an epileptic fit and due to his condition, was classed as mentally unwell. and spent his years institutionalised in a hospital facility.

During his childhood, Caine and his brother would visit their auntie while their mum went “shopping” but now realises his mother was actually visiting her eldest son.

“I felt absolute amazement, how she fooled us all for 50 years, every Monday,” he said.

While David did know who his famous brother was, he sadly died only 18 months after they got to know each other.

Unsurprisingly, his mother’s secret had a huge impact on their lives which Cain brought up again in his autobiography.

“There was nothing Ma wouldn’t do for her boys, but perhaps that was also because there was one boy she hadn’t been able to do much for.”

Caine is best known for his role as Alfie Elkins in the 1966 film Alfie and has since gone on to appear in a number of successful films such as the multi-award-winning film Interstellar, to the crass comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember and Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.