Laurence Olivier

“When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.”

“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.”

“We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act.”

“It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.”

“Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.”

“I suppose, unconsciously, I used all my wives to further my journey up the ladder.”

“My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.”

“Nobody is going to pretend that I am younger than I am. Apart from anything else, it is in the papers all the damn time - every time I have a birthday.”

“Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.”

“I can't think I've ever loved anybody quite as much... My mother was my life, really; she was my entire world.”

“We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.”

“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.”

“If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.”