Michael Caine Quotes
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My view is that you should always remake failures because then you've got nowhere to go but up.
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I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.
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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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I'm not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I'm still battling it out in the trenches.
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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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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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If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.
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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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One of the great things with comedy is that there's no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it's either uproarious or crap. That's the problem.
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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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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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One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.
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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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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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The first actor I ever saw was The Lone Ranger. I thought: "That's what I want to do."
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I always say to my wife, don't tell anyone I watch this shows like The X Factor and Pop Idol, but it fascinates me because I've done so many auditions and been knocked back.
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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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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.
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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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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've made the transition from star to character actor and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
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I didn't know what I knew. I wasn't aware of what I knew.
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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 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.