Quotes By Michael Caine

The first actor I ever saw was The Lone Ranger. I thought, That's what I want to do.

My wife comes with me on all the movies, but she is not an appendage to a film star or anything like that. She is a completely intertwined partner. She is the other half of me. Also, we're still very much in love with each other. We always have been, we always will be.

The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?'

Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.

I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.

As an actor, I'll play anything.

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

The standing ovation threw me... to be held in such regard in a town so full of talent is quite something.

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.

I feel like 35. At 35 you're old enough to know something and young enough to look forward to what you can do with the knowledge. So I stayed at 35!

I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.

I'm the audience's representative on earth.

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

Alfie was the first time I was above the title; the first time I became a star in America.

January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.

Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It's a company town, and I happen to like the company!

Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.

Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.

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.

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.

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.

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

When I'm doing an accent, you shouldn't notice it for a while, if I'm doing it right.

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.