Laurence Olivier Quotes

41 quotes in 549 categories

• I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not or, should I more frankly put it, when I am lying…
• 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…
• What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?
• When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
• No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.
• Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence - doing your best.
• Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.
• Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.
• Work is life for me, it is the only point of life-and with it there is almost religious belief that service is everything.
• 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…
• My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.
• 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…
• Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.
• You must have - besides intuition and sensitivity - a cutting edge that allows you to reach what you need. Also, you have to know…
• I have to act to live.
• What is the main problem of the actor? It is to keep the audience awake, and not let them go to sleep, then wake up…
• Acting is an everlasting search for truth.
• I'm rather bored by the subject - meaning me. It's a sort of a yoke, but at times you know, a yoke is a kind…
• If you're an artist, you've got to prove it.
• 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…

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