Michael Caine Quotes

One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.

Am I a car aficionado? No: for me, cars have always been just for transport. I didn't even know anyone who had a car until I was 14 or 15.

I don't like getting up early in the morning and learning all that stuff. I work with offers that I can't refuse.

I learned about life before I went into the theater, which is why I've been so happy. I was a soldier.

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 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.

As an actor, I'll play anything.

I regard the theater as a woman I loved dearly who treated me like dirt.

I don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.

To be a movie star, you have to carry a movie. And to carry a movie where you play the title role is the supreme example.

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

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.

You can write shorthand and still look at the guy you're talking to.

You don't make any money when you're my age. The stars get it all. That's a lie, actually.

We can only use British actors because everybody's got to talk exactly the same.

The Quiet American is anti the people who took them into the Vietnam War.

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

Sometimes, in a part, everything comes together.

Nobody did a campaign for me. I was nominated out of the blue and won out of the blue. So that was it.

If you held a pistol at my head, I couldn't tell you who they're going to vote for Best Actor.

If I work with a bad actor, my reaction is to immediately become worse than they are.

I've been on movies where I literally couldn't hear what the other actor was saying. It's very awkward.

In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.

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.

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.

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.

I don't think you retire from movies; movies retire you.

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.

I had an extraordinary belief in myself. For years people told me to give it up and even though I was poverty- stricken, I never thought I should give it up.

I had been in that part of the world as a soldier in Korea, so I had been interested in Vietnam.

I sit waiting for things that I can't refuse.

I spent 30 years of my life not being wanted at all for films.

I want to stick around with the big boys. I don't want to be in the old folks home.

I'd never been in one of those great big blockbusters.

I'm doing the next Batman. I have to become obsessed about what is offered to me.

I had been nine years in the theatre and hadn't had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn't care when, where, or how much for.

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

Wherever I live, if there isn't a restaurant I want to go to of a certain type, then I open it. That's all. For selfish reasons.

I don't do it often, but I do cry. I also laugh a lot; people tell me I'm funny and I do like to laugh.

You have to remember, I never became successful or wealthy till I was 30.

You're never too old to be crazy.

I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.

I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'

I just love to go home, no matter where I am, the most luxurious hotel suite in the world, I love to go home.

I can never be the hero now. You have to be young and all that stuff. I used to be the hero.

God willing, even I might scrape a nomination.

By the time the Oscars are on I'll be seventy. How many more chances am I going to have to get nominated for an Oscar?

In my early days, I didn't know what a good film or a bad film was, and I was trying to make some money. As it happens I was lucky. I made some good films.

Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books

I don't want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you've ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.