Michael Caine Quotes
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You don't retire from the movies. The movies retire you.
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My father was a fish market porter. So I grew up on fish, because he used to steal one a day, I grew up on the very best fish that money could buy, 'cause he only stole the good stuff.
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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.
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For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?
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In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.
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Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.
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Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk.
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You have to remember, I never became successful or wealthy till I was 30.
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I heard my first laughter on stage, when I was about 10 years old. It was gold pantomime and I remember I was playing Baron Fitznoodle, who was the father of the ugly sisters in "Cinderella." And I walked on and got a great big laugh and I thought that was fantastic, until I looked down and found that my flies were open. And so I always check my flies. I even check my flies on radio.
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Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
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Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books
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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.
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You're never too old to be crazy.
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I'm very much more choosy now. I do stuff that I really, really, really like.
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I've got a lot of back-up because my father was a Catholic, my mother was a Protestant, I was educated by Jews and I'm married to a Muslim. So I won't lose out on a technicality.
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Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.
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To me, 'Educating Rita' is the most perfect performance I could give of a character who was as far away from me as you could possibly get and of all the films I have ever been in, I think it may be the one I am most proud of.
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I must admit, the only reason I joined an amateur dramatic society is because I couldn't get to kiss any girls - I was chasing girls all the time - and so I thought if I join it, there might be some love scenes. And there was a particular girl and I thought I might get to kiss Amy. I never did get to kiss Amy but I did get to kiss Elizabeth Taylor, so it was all right, a lot later.
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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.
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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.
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I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.
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I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold but we are not cold - we don't interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken, we don't scream in your face with tears - we go home and cry on our own.
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When becoming a character, you have to steal. Steal whatever you see. You can even steal from other actors' characterizations; but if you do, only steal from the best.
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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.