Quotes By Michael Caine

You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.

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!

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

At 69, I got the girl! And it wasn't a 68-year-old girl, either.

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

I used to get the girl; now I get the part. In 'The Quiet American' you may have noticed I got the part and the girl. It's a milestone for me, because it's the last time I'm going to get the girl.

A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.

I'm a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.

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.

I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.

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

My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.

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.

I've made the transition from star to character actor and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I admired Marlon Brando as I grew up. I though he was one of the finest screen actors around.

I regard myself as someone who is retired but who occasionally goes out to work. In fact, I'm offered so much good stuff that it's not so occasional.

I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.

If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.

If you go away on location for three months and your wife stays at home, you've made a whole new load of friends and she's made a whole new load of friends and you get home and you're kind of strangers.

I see myself as 38, but you don't notice it.

There's quite a lot of bad stuff written about me. My wife even says a lot of bad stuff about me. But she is wonderful.

I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better.

When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.

I'm forever testing myself. As a person and as an actor, I have no sense of competition.

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

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.