Michael caine quotes

I have a knack of making villainous people a little bit sympathetic, a bit of fun on screen.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.

I've never taken drugs - if you take a drug of your choice, you get some ecstatic feeling.

I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, 'It's a wrap,' it's gone completely. I'm a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.

This is your life, Larry. Learn to enjoy what you've got.

You don't sacrifice your individuality; you sacrifice a lot of freedom.

I spent my entire time reading books and going to the cinema, just to escape.

A lot of people said, Who do you think you are? I told them I know exactly who I am and I'll tell you exactly where I'm going.

In film, other actors' performances really are not your concern. If the other actor isn't giving you what you want, act as though he were.

I'm the audience's representative on earth.

Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy,"Easy" doesn't enter into grown-up life.

I always exposed the weakness rather than the nastiness.

Don't sit as if you have nothing to say. You should be bursting with things to say. You just choose at this particular place and time, not to say them.

I never regret anything. I always said that when I'm old, I want to be sitting there regretting the things that I did and not the things that I didn't do; and now I'm old, and I don't regret anything! I had fun. I had fun, and I'm still having it.

My mum never understood how much I earned. When I told her I earned a million pounds a film, she said, 'How much is that?'

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

It’s a lesson in life—don’t look back, you’ll trip over.

My view is that you should always remake failures because then you've got nowhere to go but up.

To me, growing old is great. It's the very best thing - considering the alternative.

A man's body may grow old, but inside his spirit can still be as young and as restless as ever.

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

I've always got to have one impossible dream on the back burner.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.

About Superman and Batman: the former is how America views itself, the latter, darker character is how the rest of the world views America.

If you're an actor and you don't act for a long time you sort of think, I wonder if I can still do it.

No English director would've cast me as an officer, I promise you. Not one.

I never listened to the people who said I should give it up, which is the main advice I got.

I see myself as 38, but you don't notice it.

I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.

There's quite a lot of bad stuff written about me. My wife even says a lot of bad stuff about me. But she is wonderful.

I just work in order to improve myself as an actor which is what I've always done.

But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.

I don't want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you've ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who's happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I've had success as I've gotten older, because I'm able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.

I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You'd get a broken arm. So I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart's 'The Caine Mutiny,' which was playing in the theater across from the telephone booth where I learned that I'd gotten my first TV job.

When becoming a character, you have to steal. Steal whatever you see. You can even steal from other actors' characterizations; but if you do, only steal from the best.

I'm looking for me to disappear, and the acting to disappear, and all you see is a real person.

There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

My father was a fish market porter. So I grew up on fish, because he used to steal one a day, I grew up on the very best fish that money could buy, 'cause he only stole the good stuff.

I've done my job and I've got the picture out there, and I'm very happy with it.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you've had a life like mine, you have to.

I don't see myself as anything. I just wander around getting on with my life.

I've never been out with a married woman, never. I respect others' properties.

I usually control the environment I'm in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.

I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.

I have never seen it (Jaws 4) but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.

Acting is not a competition; everything must be done for the good of the film or else everybody loses.

I was watching cartoons on television and a commercial came on for one of the Batman series where I played a butler. And then my grandson looked up at me and he said, "Do you know Batman?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Really," I said, "Yeah." I said I know him very well. And he told all the boys at school, he said, "My grandpa knows Batman. Does your grandpa know Batman? OK, no. Mine does.

That to me is what my idea of film acting should be. There shouldn't be any acting. You should just be watching a real person.

I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better.

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

Be patient.Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar.

I never look back at all. All of my sentiment and emotion goes into my family. I'm an extremely family oriented person and I have a very, very happy family life. That doesn't just include blood relations. I have friends who are close to me.

If you really want to become an actor, but only providing that acting doesn't interfere with your golf game, political ambitions and your life, you don't want to become an actor. Not only is acting more than a part time job, it's more than a full time job. It's a full time obsession.

The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.

I'm very, very family oriented. I'm a big cook and a good connoisseur and I only drink very good red wines now.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.

Great acting is about listening to what they are saying ....not waiting to deliver your lines.

I've been acting a long time, and I can play a Cockney gangster or a womanizer in my sleep or standing on my head. But what I try to do is I try to find characters that are as far away from me as I possibly can and then make them real. A French Nazi is about as far away from me as I can possibly get without actually going to Mars or something.

My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.

I've never been competitive with other actors. I've been competitive with myself and I'm my own worst critic, a terrible critic I am, and unless I get something right, I feel very unhappy.

I enjoy making people laugh. The trick is to tell them jokes against yourself. If you praise yourself, your stories aren't funny.

In my opinion, everybody is getting older and older. We have a great deal of dementia because nobody grew old enough to get it.

The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.

I don't have any regrets because I'm very optimistic, and live each day as though it's the last.

Use the difficulties - if you can't avoid them

People say to me, why did you do those films, and I say, for money. It wasn't for diamond rings or kidney shaped swimming pools in Beverly Hills, it was in order to improve the lot of everyone around me.

I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.

My wife, my daughters, even my grandchildren are funny. You've got to keep a sense of humor because anger destroys you.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

My wife comes with me on all the movies, but she is not an appendage to a film star or anything like that. She is a completely intertwined partner. She is the other half of me. Also, we're still very much in love with each other. We always have been, we always will be.

It's vital to have your own space so you aren't constantly in each other's pockets.

Alfie was the first time I was above the title; the first time I became a star in America.

There is no point in competing with young talent...I just concentrate on getting better each day.

A man should dress in a way that you don't notice. He looks good and you don't know why. But it's the tailoring, the materials, and the clothes.

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser

My mother had heard all about miniskirts but had never seen one so I took her for lunch at Alvaro's [in Chelsea]. We walked down the King's Road and waited 10 seconds for our first miniskirt and a girl came along with her skirt tucked round her arse. I said: 'What do you think, ma?' And she said: 'If it's not for sale, you shouldn't put it in the window!'

You can't get blase about something you haven't done yet.

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

It's much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.

Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.

I was so poor for so long that I didn't use anything. I didn't drive cars, I didn't eat very much. So, I figured the world owed me a debt, so I've been eating very well and have had a very big car for a long time. But I still haven't caught up with my youth.

What a lot of people dont realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.

The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly - because if they don't speak fast enough, nobody will listen to them.

In real life, I'm afraid of heights - and people who get moral convictions... Adolf Hitler in London.

You've got to be flexible. Directors do a massive amount of planning and homework, and if after all that your director decides to throw it all out of the window and shoot spontaneously, then you must follow his lead.

I try to make everyone around me feel comfortable.

There was a certain moment. I was about 61 - two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying - "I don't wanna do it. The part's too small." And he sent it back to me, he said, "You shouldn't read the lover. You should read the father.

I don't worry about the last shot or the next shot. I concentrate. Every shot gets a clean slate. And when a shot is over, I wipe it out absolutely. Tell a joke or something. If you worry about how you looked, how well you did, you'll go insane.

When it comes to politics, I believe you have to cut the cake so that everybody gets a piece, but at the same time, you have to keep in mind that somebody has to make the cake.

As an actor, my attitude towards using of film versus digital is, if you have film, filmmakers have to cut eventually so you don't have to learn all that dialogue. With digital, they can just go on forever and it's a nightmare. So, I like film - nice short takes.

I'm very much more choosy now. I do stuff that I really, really, really like.

You're your first best audience, long before anybody else hears you. So don't be an easy audience. Keep asking for more.

Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary. The second act is called the Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary. But you wouldn't clap yet, because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back.

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

The trouble with women? Elbows.

Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.

I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don't want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.

I've had such a great time, I'd like to come back as me - and do it all over again.

Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It's a company town, and I happen to like the company!

You cannot have one bathroom. And it don't matter how much you love your wife and everything, 'cause you wind up with no room at all. You just get a little corner and you've got a toothbrush and your paste and a shaving brush and a razor. And you can never get in there. So you must have two bathrooms. You really must. I think it's essential.

My understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasures.

I feel like 35. At 35 you're old enough to know something and young enough to look forward to what you can do with the knowledge. So I stayed at 35!

In my day, the drug was alcohol and the weapon was a fist, so it was very sort of innocent and primitive. Now you've got drugs, guns, and knives, which are so lethal.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

I've always loved reprehensible people because they're so much more interesting to play on screen.

Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.

Not only is acting more than a part-time job, it's more than a full-time job. It's a full-time obsession.

I have been rich and I have been poor. I know which one I prefer.

Maybe it's time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day.

I'm not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I'm still battling it out in the trenches.

The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?'

At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I'm Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim.

I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.

I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

I didn't want to come in the movie every so often, every 20 minutes saying, 'Dinner is served, would you like coffee?'

I don't think human beings are bad. They're weak. And that's what makes 'em bad.

The old guys like me started in the theatre. I was in the theatre for nine years.

You start pretending to have fun, you might have a little by accident.