Quotes By Michael Caine

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I've tried it 85 times, and I've succeeded two or three times.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

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.

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

The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.

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.

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.

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

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.

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'm the audience's representative on earth.

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

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

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.

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

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!

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.