Find What You Love – The Wisdom Of Michael Caine | The Great Acting Blog
“Find what you love and do it as well as you can”
On Michael Caine’s wonderful new book, Blowing The Bloody Doors Off And Other Lessons In Life.
I listened to the audiobook which has the added bonus of being narrated by Michael Caine himself. His warm, calm and charming South London voice is well known to us of course, but what is striking is that Caine truly cares about the reader; he has a real desire to impart something useful, to help us succeed and beat the odds, and he hopes we do too. Michael Caine then, is a leader among actors.
Much of the book is wonderfully anecdotal; Caine covers a huge amount of ground in his lengthy life and career in a relatively short reading time, using his own example as illustrations of the advice and insight he so generously delivers to us. He starts with the grim poverty he was born into and takes us up to the creative renaissance which took place after he thought he was going to retire, plus he includes all of the ups and downs in between.
Above all, Blowing The Bloody Doors Off is a book about love: love your work, love your friends, love your family, love life, and even learn to love the difficulties and disappointments that will inevitably block our path. For Michael Caine, love is the elixir that will thrust us forward and lift us up off the canvas one more time. For him, you just won’t get very far without it.
The book, however, is also full of practical philosophy. Caine offers wisdom designed to help us do, to help us progress and survive. There are chapters on camera acting technique; tips on dealing with people, and on how to prepare yourself so as to get ahead of the 8-ball and cope with pressure. Perhaps then, the essence of Caine’s book is this: there is nothing more practical than love – it will help you to achieve all that you need to.
Here are some of my favourite lines:
“Learn what you can from what you get.”
“It’s about working together to create something.”
“I just set out to enjoy myself and be the best actor I could possibly become.”
“Find something you want to do and learn how to do it really well”.
“To succeed in any walk of life, you’re gonna need grit, drive and determination.”
“Learn to enjoy the obstacles that, without doubt, will be put in your way.”
“Use the difficulty – look hard and find something positive within the problem.”
“If all else fails, I can always learn from whatever mistake got me there in the first place.”
“Success is survival.”
“Success comes from doing – the best way to do enough of the right things is to do a lot of things.”
“Learn lessons from making mistakes.”
“Confidence comes from experience plus preparation.”
“Keep doing the things that got you there.”
“To endure and survive in any walk of life you need to know and learn how to pick yourself up after you fall.”
*I recommend doing the Audible trial and downloading the book for free, here.
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