Vivien Leigh Quotes

1. Life is too short to work so hard.









2. I'm a Scorpio, and Scorpios eat themselves out and burn themselves up like me. I swing between happiness and misery and I cry easily. I am a mixture of my mother's determination and my father's optimism. I am part prude and part non-conformist and I say what I think and don't dissemble. I am a mixture of French, Irish and Yorkshire, and perhaps that's what it all is.

3. Dear Lord, I'm so grateful I'm still loved.

4. I always know my lines.

5. A lucky thing Eva Peron was. She died at 32. I'm already 45.

6. Classical plays require more imagination and more general training to be able to do. That's why I like playing Shakespeare better than anything else.




7. Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy - and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.

8. Every single night I'm nervous. You never know how the audience is going to react.

9. I don't know what that Method is. Acting is life, to me, and should be.

10. I never found accents difficult, after learning languages.

11. I think Edith Evans is the most marvelous actress in the world and she can look beautiful. People who aren't beautiful can look beautiful. She can look as beautiful as Diana Cooper, who was the most beautiful woman in the world.





12. People think that if you look fairly reasonable, you can't possibly act, and as I only care about acting, I think beauty can be a great handicap.

13. Shaw is like a train. One just speaks the words and sits in one's place. But Shakespeare is like bathing in the sea - one swims where one wants.

14. English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously.

15. I adore dancing.

16. I am going to be a great actress.

17. I have just made out my will and given all the things I have and many that I haven't.

18. I know I am right for Scarlett. I can convince Mr. Selznick.



19. I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.


20. I need something truly beautiful to look at in hotel rooms.

21. I think any classical training in the theatre is of enormous value.

22. I'm not a film star, I am an actress. Being a film star is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity.

23. I'm not afraid to die.

24. I'm not young. What's wrong with that?

25. I've always been mad about cats. 

26. I've been a godmother loads of times, but being a grandmother is better than anything.

27. My first husband and I are still good friends and there is no earthly reason why I should not see him. Larry and I are very much in love.

28. My parents were absolutely delighted that I knew what I wanted to do.

29. My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.

30. One is just an interpreter of what the playwright thinks, and therefore the greater the playwright, the more satisfying it is to act in the plays.

31. Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say. But the dread must never show.

32. Streetcar is a most wonderful, wonderful play.

33. When I come into the theatre I get a sense of security. I love an audience. I love people, and I act because I like trying to give pleasure to people.



34. When I was at school at Paris, I had special lessons from Mademoiselle Antoine, an actress at the Comedie Francaise, and I was taken to every sort of play. I felt very grand.

35. You know the passage where Scarlett voices her happiness that her mother is dead, so that she can't see what a bad girl Scarlett has become? Well, that's me.

36. (when asked to take over Joan Crawford's role in Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)) No, thank you. I can just about stand looking at Joan Crawford's face at six o'clock in the morning, but not Bette Davis.

37. The only comfort for the lonely child is a cat that was in the courtyard of the school that the nuns let her take up to her dormitory.

38. The male roles are so much more adventurous.

39. Some critics saw fit to say that I was a great actress. I thought that was a foolish, wicked thing to say because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry.






40. (on Alexander Korda) Alex was like a father to us - we went to see him with every little problem we had. We usually left convinced that he had solved it - or that we'd got our own way.

41. All day long you're really leading up to the evening's performance. To time everything correctly, you have to take care of yourself-which is a very difficult thing to do, because it's highly emotional.

42. Am I finished with Hollywood? Good heavens, no! I shall certainly go back there if there is a film to make.

43. Actresses go on for a long time and there are always marvelous parts to play.



44. (on Warren Beatty) He has the kind of magnetic sensuality you could light torches with.

45. I never sleep for more than five hours, hardly ever.

46. Dickens. All during the war when I was traveling on these blackout trains, because I used to go back to see my husband on weekends, I read the whole of Dickens. And I think that that was one of the most thrilling experiences.

47. My friends, when I was young, were always older than I was, and I've always liked them. And I love old men and old ladies, really. But I've known more elderly men, like Max Beerbohm, like Beranard Berenson, like Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill - I'd put him first, anyway - what they say is so wise and so good. They know what they're talking about.

48. I hope I've one thing that Scarlett never had. A sense of humor. I want some joy out of life. And she had one thing I hope I never have. Selfish egotism.

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