Actor

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.

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

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.

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

In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.

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 see myself as 38, but you don't notice it.

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

As an actor, I'll play anything.

The first thing I'll do if I want to look really crappy is, I don't wear any makeup at all.

The greatest luxury is not driving. I didn't own a car until I was 30, and that was a Rolls-Royce, so it was cheaper to insure a chauffeur. I never want to drive again. My mind is always on other things. I hate parking, and I'm very short-tempered and would get road rage, I'm sure.

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.

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!

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

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

I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'

For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?

I had been nine years in the theatre and hadn't had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn't care when, where, or how much for.

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.