Michael Caine Quotes - Page 4

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

There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser

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?'

I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.

You've got to be flexible. Directors do a massive amount of planning and homework, and if after all that your director decides to throw it all out of the window and shoot spontaneously, then you must follow his lead.

I've been acting a long time, and I can play a Cockney gangster or a womanizer in my sleep or standing on my head. But what I try to do is I try to find characters that are as far away from me as I possibly can and then make them real. A French Nazi is about as far away from me as I can possibly get without actually going to Mars or something.

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

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.

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.

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.

I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better.

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.

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.

I never look back at all. All of my sentiment and emotion goes into my family. I'm an extremely family oriented person and I have a very, very happy family life. That doesn't just include blood relations. I have friends who are close to me.

If you really want to become an actor, but only providing that acting doesn't interfere with your golf game, political ambitions and your life, you don't want to become an actor. Not only is acting more than a part time job, it's more than a full time job. It's a full time obsession.

But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.

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.

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

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

People say to me, why did you do those films, and I say, for money. It wasn't for diamond rings or kidney shaped swimming pools in Beverly Hills, it was in order to improve the lot of everyone around me.

I was watching cartoons on television and a commercial came on for one of the Batman series where I played a butler. And then my grandson looked up at me and he said, "Do you know Batman?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Really," I said, "Yeah." I said I know him very well. And he told all the boys at school, he said, "My grandpa knows Batman. Does your grandpa know Batman? OK, no. Mine does.

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.

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