Persons [ ] Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength | Laurence Olivier, 1907-1989
Laurence Olivier, 1930
photo: Sasha (Alexander Stewart)
“Don’t waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence – doing your best.”
“The humility to prepare and the self-confidence to bring it off.”
“The art of persuasion. The actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience.”
“Don’t be afraid to be outrageous; the critics will shoot you down anyway.”
“We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act.”
Laurence Olivier photographed by Martin Munkácsi, 1939
“No matter how well you perform, there’s always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it’s lousy.”
“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.”
“Acting is an everlasting search for truth.”
“What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?”
Laurence Olivier arriving in America (Goldwyn Studios) to begin filming Wuthering Heights, 1938
“Shakespeare – The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.”
“Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.”
“We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are – politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.”
“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.”
“Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.”
Laurence Olivier in Rebecca, 1940, dir. Alfred Hitchcock
“Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is – and not so much a matter of being real.”
“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 believe in the theater; I believe in it as the first glamorizer of thought. It restores dramatic dynamics and their relations to life size.”
“Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.”
“Above all, you must remain open and fresh and alive to any new idea.”
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh / That Hamilton Woman, 1941
“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.”
“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.”
“Have a very good reason for everything you do.”
Laurence Olivier, 1907-1989
Also:
The Book and the Movie: Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier, 1938 / Alfred Hitchcock, 1940
Flick Review < Bunny Lake Is Missing | Otto Preminger (1965)
