Top 65 Quotes About Laurence Olivier
#1. He's cu-ute." Bree LaRue stumbles sideways, shielding her eyes with one hand. "Aww, look at his hair. And the chin! He's like Laurence Olivier, and a cockatoo. Like if they had a baby?
J.C. Lillis
#2. February 5: Laurence Olivier, his agent Cecil Tennant, and playwright Terence Rattigan arrive in New York to discuss with Marilyn a film of The Sleeping Prince, to be produced in London with Olivier and Marilyn in the starring roles.
Carl Rollyson
#3. I grew up with the great Sir Laurence Olivier, and I think it's fair to say that a lot of actors of my age were influenced by his very individual vocal delivery. He was a showman who would always play to the gallery.
Ian Holm
#4. The Brits are ghastly. I never would accept a Brit. It would be like Laurence Olivier being happy getting a TV Times award.
Steven Morrissey
#5. I always loved how people like Jon Voight and Laurence Olivier shocked you every time they came on-screen. They were so different each time. That's what I hope to do with acting - be the chameleon and not get stuck in a type.
Julia Stiles
#6. I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.
Denzel Washington
#7. There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company.
Ian McKellen
#8. Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.
Jerry Lewis
#9. I saw A Little Romance [and] I was so in love with Laurence Olivier. I watched that movie over and over and just fell in love with love.
Jennifer Aniston
#10. Yes, it's true, I've been called the Laurence Olivier of spoofs. I guess that would make Laurence Olivier the Leslie Nielsen of Shakespeare.
Leslie Nielsen
#11. I wanted to be Laurence Olivier, basically, to be a great classical actor, and also be able to do modern things.
Stacy Keach
#12. Even if I hadn't been cast as Doctor Who, my acting would probably have been influenced by William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and all of the other guys. Because those were the actors that I really watched every moment of, as opposed to Laurence Olivier.
Peter Capaldi
#13. When I came into the acting profession, it was quite hierarchical. You didn't sit at the same table as the leading actor. Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud ... these were very, very intimidating and powerful people.
Helen Mirren
#14. I started being interested in acting when I heard the voices of Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness. I've had the great privilege of working with Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Anthony Hopkins. These are people who inspire the work that I do.
Kenneth Branagh
#15. Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it's true, and look at the results.
Michael Mann
#16. I figure there are a few actors like Marlon Brando, George C. Scott and Laurence Olivier who have been touched by the hand of God. I'm in the next bunch.
John Forsythe
#17. A fan once stopped me outside a theatre and gave me as a gift a signed photograph of Sir Laurence Olivier. It was strange, but nice, too.
David Alan Basche
#18. Seed biscuits and milk! I hated Mrs. Mullet's seed biscuits the way Saint Paul hated sin. Perhaps even more so. I wanted to clamber up onto the table, and with a sausage on the end of a fork as my scepter, shout in my best Laurence Olivier voice, 'Will no one rid us of this turbulent pastry cook?
Alan Bradley
#19. But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theater and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud.
Patrick Stewart
#20. On Laurence Olivier as Hamlet in a 1948 film: Olivier's idea of introspection was to hood his eyes, dentalize his consonants and let the camera circle his blondined head like a sparrow looking for a place to deposit its droppings.
Robert Brustein
#21. I come from a family of actors. My grandfather was like a Laurence Olivier with the Comedie Francaise. Since I was four I went every week to the Comedie Francaise. My aunt and grandmother were there, but my grandfather was a big star.
Emmanuelle Seigner
#22. To have a childhood surrounded by people like Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh sounds glitzy, but for years I wanted to repress it. I couldn't take that kind of power and success.
Michael Korda
#23. Laurence Olivier said if you have ambition to be a serious classical actor, you must be as fit as an athlete. For me, the breakthrough was going to live in California. I exercised. I drank less. It was one of the things about California that had a positive impact on me.
Patrick Stewart
#24. We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.
Laurence Olivier
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. Autograph-hunting is the most unattractive manifestation of sex-starved curiosity.
Laurence Olivier
#28. Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence - doing your best.
Laurence Olivier
#30. 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
#32. [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
#33. The art of persuasion. The actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience.
Laurence Olivier
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it.
Laurence Olivier
#37. Above all, you must remain open and fresh and alive to any new idea.
Laurence Olivier
#38. If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.
Laurence Olivier
#39. My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.
Laurence Olivier
#40. [the only acting advice he would give] What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?
Laurence Olivier
#41. 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
#42. Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.
Laurence Olivier
#43. Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.
Laurence Olivier
#45. No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.
Laurence Olivier
#46. When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence Olivier
#47. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#54. Shakespeare - The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.
Laurence Olivier
#55. We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses.
Laurence Olivier
#56. 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
#57. The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
Laurence Olivier
#58. The humility to prepare and the self-confidence to bring it off.
Laurence Olivier
#59. 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
#61. 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
#62. Don't be afraid to be outrageous; the critics will shoot you down anyway.
Laurence Olivier
#63. 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
#64. 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
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