Michael Caine Quotes

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?'

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 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.

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

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

If you're a leading actor you don't work with another actor. You work with a lady.

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

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

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

I was so poor for so long that I didn't use anything. I didn't drive cars, I didn't eat very much. So, I figured the world owed me a debt, so I've been eating very well and have had a very big car for a long time. But I still haven't caught up with my youth.

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.

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

I've always played very human sort of characters.

Obsession is a young man’s game.

I always exposed the weakness rather than the nastiness.

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

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

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

I just work in order to improve myself as an actor which is what I've always done.

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

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

A lot of people said, Who do you think you are? I told them I know exactly who I am and I'll tell you exactly where I'm going.

No matter what the reason, if you start to scream and shout, you look a fool, and you feel a fool, and you earn the disrespect of everyone.

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

How can I change me to suit the script?

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

I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.

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.

My circle of friends are not actors at all. None of them are actors, really, because they're are not available. They're always off somewhere.

If you put someone on screen long enough, they become the hero.

My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O'Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.

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 love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.

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

I didn't know what I knew. I wasn't aware of what I knew.

I don't see myself as anything. I just wander around getting on with my life.

I'm the happiest grandfather in the world, I promise you.

I've never been competitive with other actors. I've been competitive with myself and I'm my own worst critic, a terrible critic I am, and unless I get something right, I feel very unhappy.

It's much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.

Movie actors earn their living and learn their craft through listening and reacting.

I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, 'It's a wrap,' it's gone completely. I'm a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.

You can see all sorts of things in film acting if you know where to look and what to look for. One thing I often notice is that the actor is looking for his mark, the place where he has to stand to be in the right place in the shot.

...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Youre only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

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

God willing, even I might scrape a nomination.

To me, 'Educating Rita' is the most perfect performance I could give of a character who was as far away from me as you could possibly get and of all the films I have ever been in, I think it may be the one I am most proud of.

I'm hoping there's an afterlife. As you get older, you hope even more fervently.