Michael Caine Quotes

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Michael Caine

Profession : Actor

Birth : March 14, 1933

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.

Michael Caine

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

Michael Caine

I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold but we are not cold - we don't interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken, we don't scream in your face with tears - we go home and cry on our own.

Michael Caine

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

Michael Caine

I used to get the girl; now I get the part. In 'The Quiet American' you may have noticed I got the part and the girl. It's a milestone for me, because it's the last time I'm going to get the girl.

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

As an actor, I'll play anything.

Michael Caine

I'm forever testing myself. As a person and as an actor, I have no sense of competition.

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

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

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

If you go away on location for three months and your wife stays at home, you've made a whole new load of friends and she's made a whole new load of friends and you get home and you're kind of strangers.

Michael Caine

The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.

Michael Caine

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!

Michael Caine

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!

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

My problem was that I was blond. There were no heroes with blond hair. Robert Taylor and Henry Fonda, they all had dark hair. The only one I found was Van Johnson, who wasn't too cool. He was a nice, homely American boy. So I created my own image. It worked.

Michael Caine

If you're a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you're a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.

Michael Caine

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

Michael Caine