Michael Caine

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.

I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.

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

I used to get the girl; now I get the part. In 'The Quiet American' you may have noticed I got the part and the girl. It's a milestone for me, because it's the last time I'm going to get the girl.

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.

The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.

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.

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don't want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.

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.

Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.

Presenting the Oscars was the most nerve-racking job I have ever done in show business. It's very much a live show: they have comedy writers waiting in the wings, and as you come off between presentations, they hand you an appropriate gag to tell.

I usually control the environment I'm in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.

I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.

I regard myself as someone who is retired but who occasionally goes out to work. In fact, I'm offered so much good stuff that it's not so occasional.

To be a movie star, you have to carry a movie. And to carry a movie where you play the title role is the supreme example.

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

I'm the audience's representative on earth.

You have to remember, I never became successful or wealthy till I was 30.

I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'