Michael Caine Quotes
-
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.
-
In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.
-
You have to remember, I never became successful or wealthy till I was 30.
-
My mother had heard all about miniskirts but had never seen one so I took her for lunch at Alvaro's [in Chelsea]. We walked down the King's Road and waited 10 seconds for our first miniskirt and a girl came along with her skirt tucked round her arse. I said: 'What do you think, ma?' And she said: 'If it's not for sale, you shouldn't put it in the window!'
-
Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.
-
I'd like it to be remembered as you had some fun. We're only here living for some fun. I think if you learn something, all well and good, but we're only here to give you some fun. Along the way, you may find out something.
-
When I was 6 my father went to fight in the war, so he was my big hero. I thought he was the greatest thing.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
You're never too old to be crazy.
-
I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.
-
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.
-
Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.
-
I'm very much more choosy now. I do stuff that I really, really, really like.
-
Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
-
The old guys like me started in the theatre. I was in the theatre for nine years.
-
My dialogue coach said to do a Texas accent, you lean on the next word, and that was the clue to me.
-
Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I had been in that part of the world as a soldier in Korea, so I had been interested in Vietnam.
-
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.