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.
MICHAEL CAINEMy mum never understood how much I earned. When I told her I earned a million pounds a film, she said, ‘How much is that?’
More Michael Caine Quotes
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If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.
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My understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasures.
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Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
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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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You can’t get blase about something you haven’t done yet.
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About Superman and Batman: the former is how America views itself, the latter, darker character is how the rest of the world views America.
MICHAEL CAINE -
I don’t have any regrets because I’m very optimistic, and live each day as though it’s the last.
MICHAEL CAINE -
Be patient.Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar.
MICHAEL CAINE -
I’m every bourgeois nightmare – a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.
MICHAEL CAINE -
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.
MICHAEL CAINE -
I don’t see myself as anything. I just wander around getting on with my life.
MICHAEL CAINE -
I don’t think human beings are bad. They’re weak. And that’s what makes ’em bad.
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The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly – because if they don’t speak fast enough, nobody will listen to them.
MICHAEL CAINE -
Acting is not a competition; everything must be done for the good of the film or else everybody loses.
MICHAEL CAINE -
Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser.
MICHAEL CAINE -
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.
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When it comes to politics, I believe you have to cut the cake so that everybody gets a piece, but at the same time, you have to keep in mind that somebody has to make the cake.
MICHAEL CAINE -
You don’t sacrifice your individuality; you sacrifice a lot of freedom.
MICHAEL CAINE -
I’m not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I’m still battling it out in the trenches.
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The trouble with women? Elbows.
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The old guys like me started in the theatre. I was in the theatre for nine years.
MICHAEL CAINE -
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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Great acting is about listening to what they are saying not waiting to deliver your lines.
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I never look back at all. All of my sentiment and emotion goes into my family. I’m an extremely family oriented person and I have a very, very happy family life. That doesn’t just include blood relations. I have friends who are close to me.
MICHAEL CAINE -
English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.
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My father was a fish market porter. So I grew up on fish, because he used to steal one a day, I grew up on the very best fish that money could buy, ’cause he only stole the good stuff.
MICHAEL CAINE