Michael Caine Quotes
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English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.
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Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser
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I'm always slightly envious of people who become extremely rich without anyone knowing who the hell they are, like financiers.
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I've always loved reprehensible people because they're so much more interesting to play on screen.
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I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.
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For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.
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The standing ovation threw me. ... To be held in such regard in a town so full of talent is quite something.
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...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.
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My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.
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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.
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I was in Korea. I've noticed all my life I see elderly people who have been close to death in an illness and they're absolutely cured and they say, now I know how to live my life. I've seen death. That happened to me when I was 19. It was a terrible, terrifying thing. And I live my life like those people decided to do when they were old. So, since I was 19, I've had the most fun possible every single day, even when I had a rough life. It was the army which taught me about life, and the theater which taught me how good it could be.
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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.
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Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.
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The first actor I ever saw was The Lone Ranger. I thought: "That's what I want to do."
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A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.
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I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'
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If I work with a bad actor, my reaction is to immediately become worse than they are.
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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.
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Youre only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!