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