Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.
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 don't meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.
I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.
I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.
If you're blond, as I am, and you have blond lashes, you have to wear mascara, otherwise you're invisible on stage.
I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.
I didn't want to come in the movie every so often, every 20 minutes saying, 'Dinner is served, would you like coffee?'
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?
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.
My wife, my daughters, even my grandchildren are funny. You've got to keep a sense of humor because anger destroys you.
I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.
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 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.
I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.
You're your first best audience, long before anybody else hears you. So don't be an easy audience. Keep asking for more.
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.
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?'
I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'
Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.
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.
That to me is what my idea of film acting should be. There shouldn't be any acting. You should just be watching a real person.
I'm always slightly envious of people who become extremely rich without anyone knowing who the hell they are, like financiers.
In my opinion, everybody is getting older and older. We have a great deal of dementia because nobody grew old enough to get it.
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 want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you've ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.
I enjoy making people laugh. The trick is to tell them jokes against yourself. If you praise yourself, your stories aren't funny.
I have never seen it (Jaws 4) but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.
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.
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.
I don't want to sound like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, but I do think there should be some sort of national service for young men.
In film, other actors' performances really are not your concern. If the other actor isn't giving you what you want, act as though he were.
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.
One of the great things with comedy is that there's no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it's either uproarious or crap. That's the problem.
I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don't want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.
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.
About Superman and Batman: the former is how America views itself, the latter, darker character is how the rest of the world views America.
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!
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.
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.
People say I've 'retained' my Cockney accent. I can do any accent, but I wanted other working-class boys to know that they could become actors.
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 man should dress in a way that you don't notice. He looks good and you don't know why. But it's the tailoring, the materials, and the clothes.
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!
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.
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.
I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.
I've been in every disco in the world. I saw a picture of my wife Shakira and I dancing in Studio 54; I didn't even know someone had taken that picture.
Let me put it this way: If you're sitting in a movie and you're watching me, and you say, 'Isn't that Michael Caine a wonderful actor?' then I've failed.
First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.