Top 275 Quotes & Sayings by Michael Caine - Page 2

To be a movie star, you have to carry a movie. And to carry a movie where you play the title role is the supreme example.

Am I a car aficionado? No: for me, cars have always been just for transport. I didn't even know anyone who had a car until I was 14 or 15.

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

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

I think I have the secret of a successful L.A. restaurant, especially now that so many Europeans live there. You have to have a place where they can see out the windows, see the world passing by. Europeans fancy that.

For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?

One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.

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.

A lot of movie stars are not great actors; they're just very good-looking. And when they start to age and they don't have the looks any more, then it's over.

My view of actors is that basically they're all harmless lunatics who'd be on the psychiatrist's couch, except that we get this sort of catharsis every six months or so, and we go and be absolutely someone else.

I regard the theater as a woman I loved dearly who treated me like dirt.

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

When you're a movie star and you're young, you are always playing someone who's a better fighter, a better lover, a better everything than you.

I regard myself as someone who is retired but who occasionally goes out to work. In fact, I'm offered so much good stuff that it's not so occasional.

Let me put it this way: If you're sitting in a movie and you're watching me, and you say, 'Isn't that Michael Caine a wonderful actor?' then I've failed.

I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.

I regard myself as someone who is retired but who occasionally goes out to work.

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 had been nine years in the theatre and hadn't had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn't care when, where, or how much for.

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.

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

In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.

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.

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 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.

People say I've 'retained' my Cockney accent. I can do any accent, but I wanted other working-class boys to know that they could become actors.

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.

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

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

I don't work very much, and I just sit here waiting for a script that I can't refuse - and I'm not talking about money.

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 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.

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.

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!

I used to get the girl; now I get the part. In 'The Quiet American' you may have noticed I got the part and the girl. It's a milestone for me, because it's the last time I'm going to get the girl.

I don't think you retire from movies; movies retire you.

I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.

You can see all sorts of things in film acting if you know where to look and what to look for. One thing I often notice is that the actor is looking for his mark, the place where he has to stand to be in the right place in the shot.

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.

I don't want to sound like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, but I do think there should be some sort of national service for young men.

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.

The first thing I'll do if I want to look really crappy is, I don't wear any makeup at all.

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.

I don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.

I try to make everyone around me feel comfortable.

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.

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

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.

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

I've made the transition from star to character actor and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I'm trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.