Michael Caine

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 try to make everyone around me feel comfortable.

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'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.

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 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 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.

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

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

As an actor, I'll play anything.

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

Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

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.

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

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.

Comedy is underrepresented in every actors life because its so bloody difficult to write.

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

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I'm the audience's representative on earth.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Ive been in every disco in the world. I saw a picture of my wife Shakira and I dancing in Studio 54 I didnt even know someone had taken that picture.

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

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

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

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

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.

My own mentality is that I've retired. They send me these scripts and if I absolutely have to do it, then I go to work.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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