You cannot have one bathroom. And it don't matter how much you love your wife and everything, 'cause you wind up with no room at all. You just get a little corner, and you've got a toothbrush and your paste and a shaving brush and a razor.
I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.
For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.
I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.
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.
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.
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 felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.
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?
Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.
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.
Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.
As an actor, I'll play anything.
You have to remember, I never became successful or wealthy till I was 30.
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.
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 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.
Presenting the Oscars was the most nerve-racking job I have ever done in show business. It's very much a live show: they have comedy writers waiting in the wings, and as you come off between presentations, they hand you an appropriate gag to tell.
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.
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'm the audience's representative on earth.
When I'm doing an accent, you shouldn't notice it for a while, if I'm doing it right.
If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.
Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
I usually control the environment I'm in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.
Alfie was the first time I was above the title; the first time I became a star in America.
I'm forever testing myself. As a person and as an actor, I have no sense of competition.
I think I have the secret of a successful L.A. restaurant, especially now that so many Europeans live there. You have to have a place where they can see out the windows, see the world passing by. Europeans fancy that.
Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.
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.
What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.
One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.
In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.
I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'
You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.
I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.
I don't think you retire from movies; movies retire you.
I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, 'It's a wrap,' it's gone completely. I'm a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.
I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.
Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.
Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.
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.
A lot of my best parts I've been the second choice for, so you never get too egotistical about anything.
I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.
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.
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 learned about life before I went into the theater, which is why I've been so happy. I was a soldier.
I regard the theater as a woman I loved dearly who treated me like dirt.
I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.
