Michael Caine Quotes

I don't know what it's like to be an actor, where if your show gets canceled, really you're just a bum.

If you're a young actor, unless you're on a very short list at the studios, we have to be very creative about moving your career along. Otherwise, all we can do is hope to get lucky and find that perfect role that pops you into stardom.

I immediately understood the general air of humiliation that comes with trying to do something as ridiculous as be an actor in Hollywood. It's just kind of an embarrassing endeavor.

The normal state of an actor is unemployed.

I think there's so much that is out of our control as actors, and it's just really hard to market yourself in such a huge industry.

Most actors are lucky to ever get a job, period. I never forget that, because I have so many actor friends in L.A., and most of us barely ever work. And those of us that do, it's still only 60 days out of the year that we're actually on camera. It's an absurdly low number.

People have this belief that actors are able to go out there and say, 'Oh I choose this job,' but most of the time we're just taking the job we can get. We don't just get offered thousands of jobs; we might earn one job a year and that's the one we'll take because we've got to pay the rent.

I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That's why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I'm not going to be cast again.

Thank God for television. I've been able to consistently work in television even when people say, 'Oh my God, I haven't seen you since this film or that project.' At least I'm working. It's very difficult to get that next movie role. I'm grateful to have the television world accept me.

All of a sudden I'm an actor, and I spend a decade trying to fit in and realising that I didn't, really. Sometimes in the right circumstances, with the right people, it felt OK. But other times it was a bit more jobbing. I didn't fit the mould, somehow.

And when I have lived elsewhere, every two weeks I have to fly back to LA. Even New York directors go there to audition. So I have to be there to a degree.

Acting is a precarious business. I have had periods where I felt like I couldn't get arrested, but you have to see it as a long game.

I did the whole struggling actor thing and lucked into being in the right place at the right time and getting involved in the first 'High School Musical.'

Hmm, limelight... No, I'm not Sienna Miller or Angelina Jolie. I'm very lucky and happy, but I still find it very difficult to get good scripts and good roles. It's really a jungle out there.

I don't know how to construct a career that'll make me famous. Except maybe get my ears pinned back, get my teeth done, and go to America. But then I'll be competing with billions of actors who haven't got false teeth, and who are 25.

I don't often get recognized for my work, but I look familiar. I'm just a working-man actor. I go and audition, and you just hope the work keeps coming.

There's a cumulative effect to getting good parts as a freelance actor, because you're only as good as your last job, and you have to keep going out and getting them. Unless you're part of the finance structure, by which I mean a bankable star, which I never was and never will be.

When I first came to California, it was fun and exciting to get any part in any movie and get paid for it. Because of my size and my background, it seemed like I was right for just about anything.

I went there and helped him shuffle pictures of people, and one of the agents asked me if I was interested in acting. Of course, I was a little bit interested in it; I'm sure that's part of the reason I moved to L.A. even though I never admitted it to myself.

When you are an actor or trying to be a working actor in L.A., most people have commercial agents, and then they have legitimate agents, and you just end up going on a thousand auditions.

In this business, you're dependent on the writer, the filmmaker, the luck of beating out who knows how many people for the part. I'm over getting torn up about that.

I've always said that actor years is like dog years: it feels like forever when you're not working.

I have an agent and everything. I audition occasionally.

It's a tough journey as an actor in Los Angeles.

Once I was in L.A., I realized anyone could act. Why not give it a shot? I started going to a ton of acting classes, and I found I had a real passion for it, probably the biggest passion I've ever had in my whole life.