Top 200 Michael Caine Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 5

101. “I wear a baseball cap all the time, which I would never normally wear, and I walk very fast.”

— Michael Caine

102. “By the time the Oscars are on I’ll be seventy. How many more chances am I going to have to get nominated for an Oscar?”

— Michael Caine

103. “I learn the whole time. I think it would be dull if I thought I was going to work and wouldn’t find something new. We always learn.”

— Michael Caine

104. “I’ve been on movies where I literally couldn’t hear what the other actor was saying. It’s very awkward.”

— Michael Caine

105. “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?”

— Michael Caine

106. “I had been in that part of the world as a soldier in Korea, so I had been interested in Vietnam.”

— Michael Caine

107. “I don’t have to work. I suppose I should retire. But I enjoy working.”

— Michael Caine

108. “I won an Academy Award for ‘The Cider House Rules,’ playing an American.”

— Michael Caine

109. “I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I’m pig-headed.”

— Michael Caine

110. “God willing, even I might scrape a nomination.”

— Michael Caine

111. “I’ve got a lot of back-up because my father was a Catholic, my mother was a Protestant, I was educated by Jews and I’m married to a Muslim. So I won’t lose out on a technicality.”

— Michael Caine

112. “I spent 30 years of my life not being wanted at all for films.”

— Michael Caine

113. “I’m the happiest grandfather in the world, I promise you.”

— Michael Caine

114. “You don’t retire from the movies. The movies retire you.”

— Michael Caine

115. “You don’t make any money when you’re my age. The stars get it all. That’s a lie, actually.”

— Michael Caine

116. “I’ve never been competitive with other actors. I’ve been competitive with myself and I’m my own worst critic, a terrible critic I am, and unless I get something right, I feel very unhappy.”

— Michael Caine

117. “Nobody did a campaign for me. I was nominated out of the blue and won out of the blue. So that was it.”

— Michael Caine

118. “I’ve done a lot of radio in my life so I am absolutely used of working with the voice. I have a very distinctive voice so it’s always great for me because I open my mouth and everybody knows who it is.”

— Michael Caine

119. “We can only use British actors because everybody’s got to talk exactly the same.”

— Michael Caine

120. “I don’t want to screw up today’s work and tomorrow’s worrying about yesterday’s and I don’t want to focus on what it looks like on the outside when the performance has to come from within me. I want to be in the moment now, getting it right from the inside.”

— Michael Caine

121. “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

122. “80 percent of any gang is not there to attack someone. They’re there so no one will attack them.”

— Michael Caine

123. “I didn’t want to come in the movie every so often, every 20 minutes saying, ‘Dinner is served, would you like coffee?’”

— Michael Caine

124. “Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books.”

— Michael Caine

125. “They use those monitors now, and sometimes you’ll be doing a shot and then suddenly you see yourself on one of those monitors, and I always say turn the monitor round, I don’t want to see myself on the monitor. I never see myself ’til the movie’s finished.”

— Michael Caine

126. “When you’re a movie star and you’re young, you are always playing someone who’s a better fighter, a better lover, a better everything than you.”

— Michael Caine

127. “I do like to laugh. I remember Roger Moore, years ago, saying to me “Cheer up. You’d better have a good time because this is not a rehearsal, this is life. This is the show.”

— Michael Caine

128. “I’d never been in one of those great big blockbusters.”

— Michael Caine

129. “I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, ‘Educating Rita.’”

— Michael Caine

130. “I’m very, very family oriented. I’m a big cook and a good connoisseur and I only drink very good red wines now.”

— Michael Caine

131. “I had been nine years in the theatre and hadn’t had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn’t care when, where, or how much for.”

— Michael Caine

132. “If you put someone on screen long enough, they become the hero.”

— Michael Caine

133. “I’m trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.”

— Michael Caine

134. “I’ve had such a great time, I’d like to come back as me – and do it all over again.”

— Michael Caine

135. “How can I change me to suit the script?”

— Michael Caine

136. “I think it would be great for the Academy to recognize old age.”

— Michael Caine

137. “I regard the theater as a woman I loved dearly who treated me like dirt.”

— Michael Caine

138. “But the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us you left your class, and colour, and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.”

— Michael Caine

139. “Wherever I live, if there isn’t a restaurant I want to go to of a certain type, then I open it. That’s all. For selfish reasons.”

— Michael Caine

140. “If you’re a gardener you don’t need a gym. You’re always carrying large sacks of manure all over.”

— Michael Caine

141. “In my early days, I didn’t know what a good film or a bad film was, and I was trying to make some money. As it happens I was lucky. I made some good films.”

— Michael Caine

142. “I don’t meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.”

— Michael Caine

143. “One of the great things with comedy is that there’s no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it’s either uproarious or crap. That’s the problem.”

— Michael Caine

144. “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.”

— Michael Caine

145. “I just try to play more and more difficult roles.”

— Michael Caine

146. “I don’t see myself as anything. I just wander around getting on with my life.”

— Michael Caine

147. “I just work in order to improve myself as an actor which is what I’ve always done.”

— Michael Caine

148. “The first thing I’ll do if I want to look really crappy is, I don’t wear any makeup at all.”

— Michael Caine

149. “One of the main things about Cockney is, you speak at twice the speed as Americans. Americans speak very slow.”

— Michael Caine

150. “When you’re a young actor you ring your agent every evening. It’s not like when you’re in Hollywood where you do one picture a year. You just hope you get a day on television.”

— Michael Caine