Quotes By Michael Caine

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.