Michael Caine Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

...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.

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

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

Some men just want to watch the world burn

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.

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

Use the difficulties - if you can't avoid them

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

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.

At 69, I got the girl! And it wasn't a 68-year-old girl, either.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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

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

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 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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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!'

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

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 wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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?'

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

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

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.