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
- More quotations by Actor
Laurence Olivier quotes
Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.
Autograph-hunting is the most unattractive manifestation of sex-starved curiosity.
Have a very good reason for everything you do.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.
I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it.
I take a simple view of living. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.
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.
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 of comfort. And it's always there.
If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.
It's just like a nursery game of make-believe.
Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.
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.
My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.
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.
The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
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.
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.
We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act.
We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.
When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
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