Michael Caine Quotes
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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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I'm not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I'm still battling it out in the trenches.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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It's vital to have your own space so you aren't constantly in each other's pockets.
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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.
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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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I was so poor for so long that I didn't use anything. I didn't drive cars, I didn't eat very much. So, I figured the world owed me a debt, so I've been eating very well and have had a very big car for a long time. But I still haven't caught up with my youth.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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As an actor, my attitude towards using of film versus digital is, if you have film, filmmakers have to cut eventually so you don't have to learn all that dialogue. With digital, they can just go on forever and it's a nightmare. So, I like film - nice short takes.
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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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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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Youre only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!
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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!'
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If you're a gardener you don't need a gym... You're always carrying large sacks of manure all over.
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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.
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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.
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I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.
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My view is that you should always remake failures because then you've got nowhere to go but up.