Michael Caine Quotes

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

If you're a gardener you don't need a gym. You're always carrying large sacks of manure all over.

I've been in every disco in the world. I saw a picture of my wife Shakira and I dancing in Studio 54; I didn't even know someone had taken that picture.

You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.

If you go away on location for three months and your wife stays at home, you've made a whole new load of friends and she's made a whole new load of friends and you get home and you're kind of strangers.

I learned about life before I went into the theater, which is why I've been so happy. I was a soldier.

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

If you're a leading actor you don't work with another actor. You work with a lady.

80 percent of any gang is not there to attack someone. They're there so no one will attack 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'm forever testing myself. As a person and as an actor, I have no sense of competition.

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.

I just love to go home, no matter where I am, the most luxurious hotel suite in the world, I love to go home.

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

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

Movie actors earn their living and learn their craft through listening and reacting.

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

I didn't know what I knew. I wasn't aware of what I knew.

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

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.

I'm a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.

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

My problem was that I was blond. There were no heroes with blond hair. Robert Taylor and Henry Fonda, they all had dark hair. The only one I found was Van Johnson, who wasn't too cool. He was a nice, homely American boy. So I created my own image. It worked.

When I was 6 my father went to fight in the war, so he was my big hero. I thought he was the greatest thing.

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

My career is going better now than when I was younger. Now I get the part. Back then, I'd get the girl.

I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.

I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'

Sometimes, in a part, everything comes together.

Actually, I'm really quite vain about the whole problem because I figure there is no competition - I am what I am, and either I am needed as that or I'm not suitable anyway.

If I work with a bad actor, my reaction is to immediately become worse than they are.

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

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.

When you are prepared, you are able to subdue your fear, control your nerves, channel your energy, and enter that state of highly alert relaxation that is spontaneity's best friend.

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

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

Presenting the Oscars was the most nerve-racking job I have ever done in show business. It's very much a live show: they have comedy writers waiting in the wings, and as you come off between presentations, they hand you an appropriate gag to tell.

The Quiet American is anti the people who took them into the Vietnam War.

I told him that the lawyers were always saying 'You can't say that you'll get sued.' He said to me, 'Write fiction Michael, you can tell the truth.' (Kirk Douglas to Michael Caine)

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

As an actor, I'll play anything.

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.

Be a duck, remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.

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

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

In my early days, I didn't know what a good film or a bad film was, and I was trying to make some money. As it happens I was lucky. I made some good films.

You have to remember, I never became successful or wealthy till I was 30.

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.

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.

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?'

I need a challenge 'cause I don't get the girl anymore.

There are loads of black actors.You can't say: I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good but he's black, [so] I'll vote for him. You've got to give a good performance.

One of the great things with comedy is that there's no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it's either uproarious or crap. That's the problem.

I don't do it often, but I do cry. I also laugh a lot; people tell me I'm funny and I do like to laugh.

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

I'm hoping there's an afterlife. As you get older, you hope even more fervently.

You can write shorthand and still look at the guy you're talking to.

I'm not tough anymore, I'm 82.

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

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

I feel that I helped the working class by just saying there are no barriers, which I consider to be true.

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

I've been on movies where I literally couldn't hear what the other actor was saying. It's very awkward.

For Cider House Rules, I was doing a New England accent.

If you're blond, as I am, and you have blond lashes, you have to wear mascara, otherwise you're invisible on stage.

Just because I have made a point of never losing my accent it doesn't mean I'm an eel-and-pie yob.

I heard my first laughter on stage, when I was about 10 years old. It was gold pantomime and I remember I was playing Baron Fitznoodle, who was the father of the ugly sisters in "Cinderella." And I walked on and got a great big laugh and I thought that was fantastic, until I looked down and found that my flies were open. And so I always check my flies. I even check my flies on radio.

If you put someone on screen long enough, they become the hero.

I've done a lot of radio in my life so I am absolutely used of working with the voice. I have a very distinctive voice so it's always great for me because I open my mouth and everybody knows who it is.

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

I've got a lot of back-up because my father was a Catholic, my mother was a Protestant, I was educated by Jews and I'm married to a Muslim. So I won't lose out on a technicality.

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

Use the difficulties - if you can't avoid them

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

I do like to laugh. I remember Roger Moore, years ago, saying to me "Cheer up. You'd better have a good time because this is not a rehearsal, this is life. This is the show.

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.

No matter what the reason, if you start to scream and shout, you look a fool, and you feel a fool, and you earn the disrespect of everyone.

I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold but we are not cold - we don't interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken, we don't scream in your face with tears - we go home and cry on our own.

If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.

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

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

My circle of friends are not actors at all. None of them are actors, really, because they're are not available. They're always off somewhere.

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

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

I'm always slightly envious of people who become extremely rich without anyone knowing who the hell they are, like financiers.

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.

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.

When I'm doing an accent, you shouldn't notice it for a while, if I'm doing it right.

Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.

I can't really act - I'm just trying to make as much money as I can before anyone finds out.

Instead, my biggest piece of advice to anyone just starting out, or to anyone who feels like they are taking a wrong turn along the way, is this. Find something you want to do and learn how to do it really well. Take what you got and make the most of it. Learn how to do something, whatever it is, you would choose to do for nothing. Whatever it is, when you are doing it, it makes you feel amazing and most yourself. Throw yourself into it. Challenge yourself to be the best you can be. We can't all be famous actors. But, if you can find something you love and if that something will also pay the bills, you will be on your way to your own personal paradise.

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.

To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I've tried it 85 times, and I've succeeded two or three times.

I can never be the hero now. You have to be young and all that stuff. I used to be the hero.

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

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!