I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.
— 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.
In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.
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!
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.
I've made the transition from star to character actor and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
I'm forever testing myself. As a person and as an actor, I have no sense of competition.
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.
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.
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.
I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.
The standing ovation threw me... to be held in such regard in a town so full of talent is quite something.
When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.
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.
Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.
I'm the audience's representative on earth.
I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.
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?
Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you've had a life like mine, you have to.
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.
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!
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.
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.
As an actor, I'll play anything.
I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.
You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.
Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.
I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.
I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.
When I'm doing an accent, you shouldn't notice it for a while, if I'm doing it right.
The first actor I ever saw was The Lone Ranger. I thought, That's what I want to do.
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.
If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.
I see myself as 38, but you don't notice it.
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.
In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.
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 admired Marlon Brando as I grew up. I though he was one of the finest screen actors around.
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.
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.
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.
My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.
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 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.
Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.
I'm a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.
Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.
Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.
January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.
If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking.
