Michael Caine Quotes

My wife, my daughters, even my grandchildren are funny. You've got to keep a sense of humor because anger destroys you.

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

I think I have the secret of a successful L.A. restaurant, especially now that so many Europeans live there. You have to have a place where they can see out the windows, see the world passing by. Europeans fancy that.

I didn't want to come in the movie every so often, every 20 minutes saying, 'Dinner is served, would you like coffee?'

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who's happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I've had success as I've gotten older, because I'm able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.

I don't worry about the last shot or the next shot. I concentrate. Every shot gets a clean slate. And when a shot is over, I wipe it out absolutely. Tell a joke or something. If you worry about how you looked, how well you did, you'll go insane.

I'm not tough anymore, I'm 82.

I'm trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

Don't sit as if you have nothing to say. You should be bursting with things to say. You just choose at this particular place and time, not to say them.

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?

If you're blond, as I am, and you have blond lashes, you have to wear mascara, otherwise you're invisible on stage.

I have enough money not to do pictures ever. I'm seventy years old. I don't want to get up at 6:30 in the morning and learn ten pages of dialogue to do with a bunch of creeps I don't like. It's gotta be fun for me.

It’s a lesson in life—don’t look back, you’ll trip over.

My mum never understood how much I earned. When I told her I earned a million pounds a film, she said, 'How much is that?'

The old guys like me started in the theatre. I was in the theatre for nine years.

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