Top 42 Laurence Olivier Quotes
#1. When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence Olivier
#2. I believe in the theater; I believe in it as the first glamorizer of thought. It restores dramatic dynamics and their relations to life size.
Laurence Olivier
#4. I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.
Laurence Olivier
#5. Art is a little bit larger than life - it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.
Laurence Olivier
#9. Shakespeare - The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.
Laurence Olivier
#10. We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses.
Laurence Olivier
#11. No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.
Laurence Olivier
#12. The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
Laurence Olivier
#13. The humility to prepare and the self-confidence to bring it off.
Laurence Olivier
#14. I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.
Laurence Olivier
#16. I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.
Laurence Olivier
#17. Don't be afraid to be outrageous; the critics will shoot you down anyway.
Laurence Olivier
#18. There is a spirit in us that makes our brass to blare and our cymbals crash-all, of course, supported by the practicalities of trained lung power, throat, heart, guts.
Laurence Olivier
#19. If I wasn't an actor, I think I'd have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights.
Laurence Olivier
#21. I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.
Laurence Olivier
#22. We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.
Laurence Olivier
#23. I often think that could we creep behind the actor's eyes, we would find an attic of forgotten toys and a copy of the Domesday Book.
Laurence Olivier
#24. Of all the things I've done in life, directing a motion picture is the most beautiful. It's the most exciting and the nearest than an interpretive craftsman, such as an actor can possibly get to being a creator.
Laurence Olivier
#25. Autograph-hunting is the most unattractive manifestation of sex-starved curiosity.
Laurence Olivier
#26. Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence - doing your best.
Laurence Olivier
#28. The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.
Laurence Olivier
#30. [in 1979] You must have - besides intuition and sensitivity - a cutting edge that allows you to reach what you need. Also, you have to know life - bastards included - and it takes a bit of one to know one, don't you think?
Laurence Olivier
#31. The art of persuasion. The actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience.
Laurence Olivier
#32. Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.
Laurence Olivier
#33. Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.
Laurence Olivier
#34. I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it.
Laurence Olivier
#35. Above all, you must remain open and fresh and alive to any new idea.
Laurence Olivier
#36. If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.
Laurence Olivier
#37. My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.
Laurence Olivier
#38. [the only acting advice he would give] What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?
Laurence Olivier
#39. Work is life for me, it is the only point of life-and with it there is almost religious belief that service is everything.
Laurence Olivier
#40. Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.
Laurence Olivier
#41. Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.
Laurence Olivier
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