Laurence Olivier Quotes

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

- Laurence Olivier

'Richard III' is a really difficult play to film - it's involved, often obscure. I felt it absolutely necessary to do more simplification than I've ever done before.

- Laurence Olivier

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

We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act.

- Laurence Olivier

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

- Laurence Olivier

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

Nobody is going to pretend that I am younger than I am. Apart from anything else, it is in the papers all the damn time - every time I have a birthday.

- Laurence Olivier

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

It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.

- Laurence Olivier

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

- 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

I suppose, unconsciously, I used all my wives to further my journey up the ladder.

- 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

Have a very good reason for everything you do.

- 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 actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

- Laurence Olivier

If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.

- Laurence Olivier

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

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

- Laurence Olivier

My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.

- Laurence Olivier

Nine books have been written about me, and there's not a word of truth in any of them.

- 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

I can't think I've ever loved anybody quite as much... My mother was my life, really; she was my entire world.

- Laurence Olivier

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

- Laurence Olivier

A man's prime interest in life must be his work.

- Laurence Olivier