A biography for Michael Cainehasn’t been written yet.
“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 did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.”
“I regard myself as someone who is retired but who occasionally goes out to work.”
“I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.”
“The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.”
“People say I've 'retained' my Cockney accent. I can do any accent, but I wanted other working-class boys to know that they could become actors.”
“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 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'm the audience's representative on earth.”
“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.”
“If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.”
“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.”
“You have to remember, I never became successful or wealthy till I was 30.”
“I just love to go home, no matter where I am, the most luxurious hotel suite in the world, I love to go home.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I usually control the environment I'm in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.”
“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.”
“To me, 'Educating Rita' is the most perfect performance I could give of a character who was as far away from me as you could possibly get and of all the films I have ever been in, I think it may be the one I am most proud of.”
“A lot of movie stars are not great actors; they're just very good-looking. And when they start to age and they don't have the looks any more, then it's over.”