Michael Caine Quotes

27 quotations by Michael Caine

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

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

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

The first actor I ever saw was The Lone Ranger. I thought, That's what I want to do.

The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

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.

January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

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

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 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.

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

I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

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

Alfie was the first time I was above the title; the first time I became a star in America.

A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.