Laurence Olivier Quotes

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

A sexual athlete is not likely to find sufficient energy for work of another athletic kind, and the acting of great parts most definitely was and always will be athletic, depending on inner if not on visible energy. Members of other professions that depend on the expenditure of physical energy must, I believe, find similar difficulties when attempting to double up on their energies. One has often heard that the most magnificent specimens of boxers, wrestlers and champions in almost every branch of athletic sport prove to be disappointing upon the removal of that revered jockstrap. ~ Laurence Olivier

Autograph-hunting is the most unattractive manifestation of sex-starved curiosity. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

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

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

Life is enthusiasm, zest. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

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

In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation's generosities this particular choice may perhaps be found by future generations as a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it ... the prodigal, pure, human kindness of it ... must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament which shines upon me at this moment, dazzling me a little, but filling me with warmth of the extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow. ~ Laurence Olivier

[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

Don't be afraid to be outrageous; the critics will shoot you down anyway. ~ Laurence Olivier

I wanted to be Laurence Olivier, basically, to be a great classical actor, and also be able to do modern things. ~ Stacy Keach

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

Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

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

The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

The art of persuasion. The actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience. ~ Laurence Olivier

Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence - doing your best. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

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

I'm having my lunch when I hear a familiar hoarse shout, 'Oy Tony!' I whip round, damaging my neck further, to see Michael Gambon in the lunch queue. …

Gambon tells me the story of Olivier auditioning him at the Old Vic in 1962. His audition speech was from Richard III. 'See, Tone, I was thick as two short planks then and I didn't know he'd had a rather notable success in the part. I was just shitting myself about meeting the Great Man. He sussed how green I was and started farting around.'

As reported by Gambon, their conversation went like this:

Olivier: 'What are you going to do for me?'

Gambon: 'Richard the Third.'

Olivier: 'Is that so. Which part?'

Gambon: 'Richard the Third.'

Olivier: 'Yes, but which part?'

Gambon: 'Richard the Third.'

Olivier: 'Yes, I understand that, but which part?'

Gambon: 'Richard the Third.'

Olivier: 'But which character? Catesby? Ratcliffe? Buckingham's a good part …'

Gambon: 'Oh I see, beg your pardon, no, Richard the Third.'

Olivier: 'What, the King? Richard?'

Gambon: ' - the Third, yeah.'

Olivier: "You've got a fucking cheek, haven't you?'

Gambon: 'Beg your pardon?'

Olivier: 'Never mind, which part are you going to do?'

Gambon: 'Richard the Third.'

Olivier: 'Don't start that again. Which speech?'

Gambon: 'Oh I see, beg your p ~ Antony Sher

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

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

The humility to prepare and the self-confidence to bring it off. ~ Laurence Olivier

Without acting, I cannot breathe. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

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

We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act. ~ Laurence Olivier

I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

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

We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings. ~ Laurence Olivier

When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part. ~ Laurence Olivier

Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength. ~ Laurence Olivier

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought. ~ Laurence Olivier

Shakespeare - The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God. ~ Laurence Olivier

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

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

If I wanted to be a painter, I might think about trying to be like Van Gogh, or if I was an actor, act like Laurence Olivier. If I was an architect, there's Frank Gehry. But you can't just copy somebody. If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. ~ Bob Dylan

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

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

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

Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what's serious. I think that's true. Sometimes things are really funny if you're absolutely earnest. If you're really serious, it's hilarious. ~ Christopher Walken

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

Americans think anything you do not get paid for is not worth doing. As a consequence, the things that don't get done are often the most worthwhile. ~ Laurence Overmire

The machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies riddled through and through with incompetence. ~ Laurence J. Peter

I was born and raised in a suburb of Paris by a working-class family. ~ Olivier Martinez

Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there. ~ Laurence Fishburne

My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong. ~ Langston Hughes

Art is always, even at its most repulsive, an impassioned cry of love. ~ Laurence Overmire

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought ~ Laurence J. Peter

A free press is one that prints a dictator's speech but doesn't have to. ~ Laurence J. Peter

Alas, poor YORICK! ~ Laurence Sterne

I don't believe for a minute that the proof of God's existence is achieved. My faith prohibits me from believing that the proof of God's existence can ever be adduced. My God is not an object for verification, He is a subject for love. My faith is not knowledge, it is acceptance. It is a matter not of calculation but of trust. ~ Laurence Cosse

If at first you don't succeed, you may be at your level of incompetence already. ~ Laurence J. Peter

When it becomes acceptable to kill another man or woman, childhood dies." whispered Laurence. "When it becomes acceptable to kill a child…humanity dies. ~ Kipjo Kenyatta Ewers

My mother was actually born in Ohio but raised in West Virginia where her family had a laundry. She has a West Virginian accent. My father was born in China, but he's the son of an American citizen. My paternal grandfather was born in San Francisco in 1867. ~ Laurence Yep

I am rampant with memory. ~ Margaret Laurence

You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn't maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a t-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller? ~ Jimmy Breslin

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of - - , was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether 'twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life, - on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year, - as certain as ever the Sunday-night came, - to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands: - And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of, - he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up, - but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head. ~ Laurence Sterne

When something horrible is done to you, the natural impulse is to strike back. ~ Laurence Yep

I'm a very good packer, but I probably take too much in the way of toiletries. You only really need a toothbrush, as most places you go to have a bar of soap and some shampoo. ~ Laurence Fox

NOT THEY WHO SOAR Not they who soar, but they who plod Their rugged way, unhelped, to God Are heroes; they who higher fare, And, flying, fan the upper air, Miss all the toil that hugs the sod. 'Tis they whose backs have felt the rod, Whose feet have pressed the path unshod, May smile upon defeated care, Not they who soar. High up there are no thorns to prod, Nor boulders lurking 'neath the clod To turn the keenness of the share, For flight is ever free and rare; But heroes they the soil who 've trod, Not they who soar! ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

The summit is not the only place on the mountain. ~ Laurence Gonzales

'Taken' is a really difficult project because it was a big surprise for everybody. ~ Olivier Megaton

Bore : A fellow who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours. ~ Laurence J. Peter

But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries
the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works. ~ Laurence Sterne

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained "it could not get out." - I look'd up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, or child, I went out without further attention.
In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage. - "I can't get out - I can't get out," said the starling.
I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approach'd it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. - "I can't get out," said the starling. - God help thee! said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turn'd about the cage to get to the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. - I took both hands to it.
The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, press'd his breast against it, as if impatient. - I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. - "No," said the starling - "I can't get out - I can't get out," said the starling. ~ Laurence Sterne

You don't need to take a persons advice to make him feel good, just ask him for it. ~ Laurence J. Peter

If nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family. ~ Laurence Housman

Without patience and interest, one will only have access to immediate pleasures - which are good, but much lower in quality than the pleasures gained over time. ~ Olivier Magny

There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep. ~ Laurence Sterne

I can't say it. Now, at last, it becomes impossible for me to mouth the words
I'm fine. I won't say anything. ~ Margaret Laurence

Things are going to happen that you can't control. You can't let it bother you. You have to try your best. ~ Laurence Yep

So that whether the pain of a wound in the groin (caeteris paribus) is greater than the pain of a wound in the knee - or
Whether the pain of a wound in the knee is not greater than the pain of a wound in the groin - are points which to this day remain unsettled. ~ Laurence Sterne

When Laurie said 'Good-by', he whispered significantly, It won't do a bit of good, Jo. My eye is on you; so mind what you do, or I'll come and bring you home. ~ Louisa May Alcott

For the last half of my life I have had the doubtful benefit of a brother whose literary reputation is much greater than my own. ~ Laurence Housman

A final caution to students: in making judgments on literature, always be honest. Do not pretend to like what you really do not like. Do not be afraid to admit a liking for what you do like. A genuine enthusiasm for the second-rate is much better than false enthusiasm or no enthusiasm at all. Be neither hasty nor timorous in making your judgments. When you have attentively read a poem and thoroughly considered it, decide what you think. Do not hedge, equivocate, or try to find out others' opinions before forming your own. But having formed an opinion and expressed it, do not allow it to petrify. Compare your opinion then with the opinions of others; allow yourself to change it when convinced of its error: in this way you learn. Honestly, courage, and humility are the necessary moral foundations for all genuine literary judgment. ~ Laurence Perrine

An excess of law inescapably weakens the rule of law. ~ Laurence Tribe

The sun beams are always there. The trick is in seeing them. ~ Laurence Gonzales

It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him. ~ Laurence Sterne

Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? ~ Laurence Sterne

I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.
Accordingly I set off thus: ~ Laurence Sterne

In a manner of speaking, the fact that humankind itself is unpredictable is the quintessential stumbling-block for archaeologists. We have to assume that the people whose dwelling-places, artefacts, lives even, we are dealing with were rational, integrated, sane and sensible human beings. Then we look around at our own contemporaries and wonder how this belief can possibly be sustained. ~ Laurence Flanagan

When it became clear that Lennon was not going to speak with me, it really became a how-I-didn't-get-the-story story. It was a caper. ~ Laurence Shames

There had not been a lynching in America in a quarter century, and no one standing looking at the body had ever seen such a crime, but they had heard about it from family members and read about it in social science books in school. And they believed they knew what had occurred. White men had lynched a black man, and they had done it to send a message of intimidation and terror. This was something they thought would never happy again, and many of the black onlookers wept, others fell to the ground beating their fists against the earth. ~ Laurence Leamer

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence. ~ Laurence J. Peter