Top 275 Quotes & Sayings by Michael Caine - Page 4

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

I'd like it to be remembered as you had some fun. We're only here [living] for some fun. I think if you learn something, all well and good, but we're only here to give you some fun. Along the way, you may find out something.

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

Some men just want to watch the world burn

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

I don't like getting up early in the morning and learning all that stuff. I work with offers that I can't refuse.

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

God willing, even I might scrape a nomination.

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

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

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

I spent 30 years of my life not being wanted at all for films.

The standing ovation threw me. ... To be held in such regard in a town so full of talent is quite something.

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

I always say to my wife, don't tell anyone I watch this [shows like The X Factor and Pop Idol], but it fascinates me because I've done so many auditions and been knocked back.

I want to stick around with the big boys. I don't want to be in the old folks home.

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

If you held a pistol at my head, I couldn't tell you who they're going to vote for Best Actor.

80 percent of any gang is not there to attack someone. They're there so no one will attack them.

I don't have to work. I suppose I should retire. But I enjoy working.

Sometimes, in a part, everything comes together.

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

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.

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.

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

I've done a lot of radio in my life. I've done radio plays for the BBC when I was young so I was absolutely used to that style of work, 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.

My dialogue coach said to do a Texas accent, you lean on the next word, and that was the clue to me.

I've always played very human sort of characters.

You don't retire from the movies. The movies retire you.

I wear a baseball cap all the time, which I would never normally wear, and I walk very fast.

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

It's funny, people ask me, 'What would you consider the most romantic track on your record Mr Caine?' And I say 'Swollen' by Bent, and they say 'I think he's off his rocker!'

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

You don't make any money when you're my age. The stars get it all. That's a lie, actually.

I had an extraordinary belief in myself. For years people told me to give it up and even though I was poverty- stricken, I never thought I should give it up.

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

The first actor I ever saw was The Lone Ranger. I thought: "That's what I want to do."

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

Nobody did a campaign for me. I was nominated out of the blue and won out of the blue. So that was it.

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

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

To be a movie star, you have to invent yourself.

Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books

I had been in that part of the world as a soldier in Korea, so I had been interested in Vietnam.

How can I change me to suit the script?

I'd never been in one of those great big blockbusters.

I sit waiting for things that I can't refuse.

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.

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.

I'm doing the next Batman. I have to become obsessed about what is offered to me.

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

We can only use British actors because everybody's got to talk exactly the same.

I don't have to work, really, but I do enjoy working, and I do enjoy getting paid.

By the time the Oscars are on I'll be seventy. How many more chances am I going to have to get nominated for an Oscar?

Youre only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

You must always steal, but only from the best people. Steal any trick that looks worthwhile. If you see Vivien Leigh or Robert DeNiro or Meryl Streep do something stunningly effective, and you can analyze how he or she did it, then pinch it. Because you can be sure that they stole it in the first place.

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

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

And to Tom Cruise, for if you had won this, your asking price would have gone down so fast. Do you have any idea what supporting actors get paid? We get only one trailer, a small one, in the back.

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