It’s much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.
MICHAEL CAINEBe like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
More Michael Caine Quotes
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It’s a lesson in life – don’t look back, you’ll trip over.
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Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.
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There’s only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.
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I don’t see myself as anything. I just wander around getting on with my life.
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I’ve always got to have one impossible dream on the back burner.
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The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.
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I was so poor for so long that I didn’t use anything. I didn’t drive cars, I didn’t eat very much. So, I figured the world owed me a debt, so I’ve been eating very well and have had a very big car for a long time. But I still haven’t caught up with my youth.
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I’ve never taken drugs – if you take a drug of your choice, you get some ecstatic feeling.
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I never regret anything. I always said that when I’m old, I want to be sitting there regretting the things that I did and not the things that I didn’t do; and now I’m old, and I don’t regret anything! I had fun. I had fun, and I’m still having it.
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Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy,”Easy” doesn’t enter into grown-up life.
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In my opinion, everybody is getting older and older. We have a great deal of dementia because nobody grew old enough to get it.
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I have been rich and I have been poor. I know which one I prefer.
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I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.
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I enjoy making people laugh. The trick is to tell them jokes against yourself. If you praise yourself, your stories aren’t funny.
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For all my education, accomplishments, and so called ‘wisdom’… I can’t fathom my own heart.
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Use the difficulties – if you can’t avoid them
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There was a certain moment. I was about 61 – two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying – “I don’t wanna do it. The part’s too small.” And he sent it back to me, he said, “You shouldn’t read the lover. You should read the father.
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At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I’m Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim.
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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.
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I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.
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You’ve got to be flexible. Directors do a massive amount of planning and homework, and if after all that your director decides to throw it all out of the window and shoot spontaneously, then you must follow his lead.
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When I look in the mirror, I see someone who’s happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I’ve had success as I’ve gotten older, because I’m able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.
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I’m the audience’s representative on earth.
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I don’t think human beings are bad. They’re weak. And that’s what makes ’em bad.
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You don’t sacrifice your individuality; you sacrifice a lot of freedom.
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English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.
MICHAEL CAINE