Michael Caine Quotes
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I usually control the environment I'm in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.
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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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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?'
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If you're a leading actor you don't work with another actor. You work with a lady.
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If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.
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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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For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.
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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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...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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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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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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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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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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I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.
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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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A man's body may grow old, but inside his spirit can still be as young and as restless as ever.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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In my opinion, everybody is getting older and older. We have a great deal of dementia because nobody grew old enough to get it.
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I can never be the hero now. You have to be young and all that stuff. I used to be the hero.
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I don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.
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One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.