What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.

Michael Caine

You Top Them

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

Michael Caine

Ways Way Underneath

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

Michael Caine

Young Man Young You

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.

Michael Caine

Age Yiddish Wish

When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.

Michael Caine

You Top T

My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O'Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.

Michael Caine

Who Us Tramp

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

Michael Caine

Art Wit Wanted

What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.

Michael Caine

You Top Them

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

Michael Caine

Wisdom Men Education

The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?'

Michael Caine

Change Will T

My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.

Michael Caine

Wayne Way Useful

Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

Michael Caine

Money Age Your

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.

Michael Caine

Love Your You

Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you've had a life like mine, you have to.

Michael Caine

Life God You

My wife, my daughters, even my grandchildren are funny. You've got to keep a sense of humor because anger destroys you.

Michael Caine

Humor Funny Anger

I'm forever testing myself. As a person and as an actor, I have no sense of competition.

Michael Caine

Pet Tin Testing

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

Michael Caine

Work You Working-Class

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.

Michael Caine

Life You Want

People say I've 'retained' my Cockney accent. I can do any accent, but I wanted other working-class boys to know that they could become actors.

Michael Caine

Work Working-Class Working

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

Michael Caine

World Wing Window

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.

Michael Caine

You Where Tin

I've always loved reprehensible people because they're so much more interesting to play on screen.

Michael Caine

The greatest luxury is not driving. I didn't own a car until I was 30, and that was a Rolls-Royce, so it was cheaper to insure a chauffeur. I never want to drive again. My mind is always on other things. I hate parking, and I'm very short-tempered and would get road rage, I'm sure.

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

I feel like 35. At 35 you're old enough to know something and young enough to look forward to what you can do with the knowledge. So I stayed at 35!

Michael Caine

Oh, what a shock. My career must be slipping. This is the first time I've been available to pick up an award.

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.

Michael Caine

I admired Marlon Brando as I grew up. I though he was one of the finest screen actors around.

Michael Caine

My problem was that I was blond. There were no heroes with blond hair. Robert Taylor and Henry Fonda, they all had dark hair. The only one I found was Van Johnson, who wasn't too cool. He was a nice, homely American boy. So I created my own image. It worked.

Michael Caine

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You'd get a broken arm. So I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart's 'The Caine Mutiny,' which was playing in the theater across from the telephone booth where I learned that I'd gotten my first TV job.

Michael Caine

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

Michael Caine

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

Michael Caine

I regard myself as someone who is retired but who occasionally goes out to work.

Michael Caine

To me, growing old is great. It's the very best thing - considering the alternative.

Michael Caine

I learned about life before I went into the theater, which is why I've been so happy. I was a soldier.

Michael Caine

I'm a sort of boy next door. If that boy has a good scriptwriter.

Michael Caine

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

Michael Caine

I try to make everyone around me feel comfortable.

Michael Caine

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.

Michael Caine

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.

Michael Caine

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

Michael Caine

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.

Michael Caine

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

Michael Caine

I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.

Michael Caine

Am I a car aficionado? No: for me, cars have always been just for transport. I didn't even know anyone who had a car until I was 14 or 15.

Michael Caine

The standing ovation threw me... to be held in such regard in a town so full of talent is quite something.

Michael Caine

I don't do it often, but I do cry. I also laugh a lot; people tell me I'm funny and I do like to laugh.

Michael Caine