Michael Caine Quotes
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I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.
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I've never been competitive with other actors. I've been competitive with myself and I'm my own worst critic, a terrible critic I am, and unless I get something right, I feel very unhappy.
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Just because I have made a point of never losing my accent it doesn't mean I'm an eel-and-pie yob.
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I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.
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I learned about life before I went into the theater, which is why I've been so happy. I was a soldier.
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In my day, the drug was alcohol and the weapon was a fist, so it was very sort of innocent and primitive. Now you've got drugs, guns, and knives, which are so lethal.
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I spent my life in the library reading books.
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When you're a young actor you ring your agent every evening. It's not like when you're in Hollywood where you do one picture a year. You just hope you get a day on television.
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I've always played very human sort of characters.
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A lot of movie stars are not great actors; they're just very good-looking. And when they start to age and they don't have the looks any more, then it's over.
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You must always steal, but only from the best people. Steal any trick that looks worthwhile. If you see Vivien Leigh or Robert DeNiro or Meryl Streep do something stunningly effective, and you can analyze how he or she did it, then pinch it. Because you can be sure that they stole it in the first place.
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That to me is what my idea of film acting should be. There shouldn't be any acting. You should just be watching a real person.
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You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.
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When you're a movie star and you're young, you are always playing someone who's a better fighter, a better lover, a better everything than you.
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How can I change me to suit the script?
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I never regret anything. I always said that when I'm old, I want to be sitting there regretting the things that I did and not the things that I didn't do; and now I'm old, and I don't regret anything! I had fun. I had fun, and I'm still having it.
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I'm not tough anymore, I'm 82.
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I regard the theater as a woman I loved dearly who treated me like dirt.
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And to Tom Cruise, for if you had won this, your asking price would have gone down so fast. Do you have any idea what supporting actors get paid? We get only one trailer, a small one, in the back.
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It's much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.
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Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you've had a life like mine, you have to.
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People say to me, why did you do those films, and I say, for money. It wasn't for diamond rings or kidney shaped swimming pools in Beverly Hills, it was in order to improve the lot of everyone around me.
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For Cider House Rules, I was doing a New England accent.
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Not only is acting more than a part-time job, it's more than a full-time job. It's a full-time obsession.