Michael Caine quotes:

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.

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.

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.

The greatest luxury is not driving. I didn't own a car until I was 30, and that was a Rolls-Royce, so it was cheaper to insure a chauffeur. I never want to drive again. My mind is always on other things. I hate parking, and I'm very short-tempered and would get road rage, I'm sure.

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.

Wherever I live, if there isn't a restaurant I want to go to of a certain type, then I open it. That's all. For selfish reasons.

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

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

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.

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.

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

January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.

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

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

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

I'm forever testing myself. As a person and as an actor, I have no sense of competition.

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.

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

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

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

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!

A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm the audience's representative on earth.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

If you're a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you're a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.

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

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.

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

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

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.

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.

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 meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.

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

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)"

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

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.

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

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.

The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

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

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

When I was a young actor I was in a lot of film doing one day work and two days' work, and they've included all those titles, which I don't even remember. I think I've played the lead in about 75 movies.

My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O'Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.

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

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

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

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 always exposed the weakness rather than the nastiness.

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

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.

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!'

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.

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

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.

I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.

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

To me, 'Educating Rita' is the most perfect performance I could give of a character who was as far away from me as you could possibly get and of all the films I have ever been in, I think it may be the one I am most proud of.

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

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

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.

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'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.

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

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.

Every time you get a movie, you get a medical. So you know, you know you're alright for a couple of weeks.

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

What a lot of people don't 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.

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 admired Marlon Brando as I grew up. I though he was one of the finest screen actors around.

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

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.

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 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.

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?'

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I try to make everyone around me feel comfortable.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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