Laurence Olivier
[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.Collection: Character
If you're an artist, you've got to prove it.Collection: Art
Scratch an actor and you'll find an actor.Collection: Scratches
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.Collection: Heart
We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Kindness
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.Collection: Believe
Autograph-hunting is the most unattractive manifestation of sex-starved curiosity.Collection: Sex
I have to act to live.Collection: Theatre
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.Collection: Sports
[on whether he harbored any resentment at his forced retirement from the stage after he was fired by Britain's National Theater] I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare... An actor must act.Collection: Actors