When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.
I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.
I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'
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.
I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.
The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.
Alfie was the first time I was above the title; the first time I became a star in America.
Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.
The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.
For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.
I think I have the secret of a successful L.A. restaurant, especially now that so many Europeans live there. You have to have a place where they can see out the windows, see the world passing by. Europeans fancy that.
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.
You can see all sorts of things in film acting if you know where to look and what to look for. One thing I often notice is that the actor is looking for his mark, the place where he has to stand to be in the right place in the shot.
Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.
Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.
I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.
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!
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 regard myself as someone who is retired but who occasionally goes out to work.
I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.
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.
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.
I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.
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.
I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.
Every time you get a movie, you get a medical. So you know, you know you're alright for a couple of weeks.
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.
You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.
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'm always slightly envious of people who become extremely rich without anyone knowing who the hell they are, like financiers.
I've always loved reprehensible people because they're so much more interesting to play on screen.
January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.
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.
You cannot have one bathroom. And it don't matter how much you love your wife and everything, 'cause you wind up with no room at all. You just get a little corner, and you've got a toothbrush and your paste and a shaving brush and a razor.
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've made the transition from star to character actor and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
