This book is short and sweet, right to the point and actually pretty fun to read. Michael Caine knows what he's doing (ridiculously obvious comment of the day) and he gives a lot of great tips to actors and filmmakers alive. I am a director and I've read dozens of books on directing and there are things in this slim volume that I have never seen anywhere else.

Michael Caine's awareness of what makes screen acting different than the stage, and his ability to perform with that awareness and then share it with others is a gift to all actors, as well as those who want to understand what makes an actor great and a movie superb or a bomb. There is nothing better for acting on screen.

Caine provides a succinct account of where he's been and what he's learned in the world behind the camera. Tips are thrown at the actor as we visit Caine's memories and experiences in film. There were only a few pieces of knowledge I was able to pull from the text in the end, and in that sense I feel a little shortchanged. But the book was an interesting and easy read, and should be read by anyone whose experience behind the camera has been very minimal or independent.

Main theme: If you want to act and entertain OTHER PEOPLE, don't treat people like [...].

This is important for actors. I own the video and the book and purchased another copy of the book for a gift for a friend.

Caine writes a lot like he acts: he just gets going, with no fuss. Some of his acting notions are simplistic -- he notes how the early actors were orating like theater actors (which is true), but he doesn't note that they were acting in silent film, where grand gestures and flamboyance was necessary (unless possibly dealing with extreme close-ups). The nice thing about his book, however, is that it is specifically related to film acting; he knows the difference between stage and screen, and this very practical book could be very useful for those young actors who don't realize the extreme difference between the two mediums (he at one point criticizes the theater actors who can't come to accept the rules of the movies). The book details Caine's own thoughts, which are mostly sensible approaches to the art -- you get a sense of him, how his view is that the camera already loves you, so don't bother trying to woo it with shameful mugging.

He touches on a lot of rather simplistic notions, but they're nevertheless important, and he makes you understand the importance of nuance: it's necessary to understand the logic of a line rather than the line itself; how to indicate through your face when another actor reads a line and they're only half-way through a sentence that you know what you're going to say next, but have to wait for them to finish; the millions of possibilities on how to react in terms of inflection when offered something as simple as tea. He talks about some of his own quirks, not wanting to put his character shoes on until just before shooting, but it's never about him more than it's about acting. He does manage to be charming in an underhanded way -- he slips in a tribute to the beauty of Julie Christie, for instance. (He also takes a few seconds to note Orson Welles' genius, the bullying of Otto Preminger, and how Montgomery Clift's jealousy as an actor is unhealthy.) He spends time with a lot of technical tricks that make a lot of sense -- simply reading lines and walking during a rehearsal, so that you won't forget your lines when you're shooting (because movement will be tied to the words). A fine little book.