I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You'd get a broken arm. So I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart's 'The Caine Mutiny,' which was playing in the theater across from the telephone booth where I learned that I'd gotten my first TV job.

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.

Use the difficulties - if you can't avoid them

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

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.

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

I learn the whole time. I think it would be dull if I thought I was going to work and wouldn't find something new. We always learn.