Laurence Olivier

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.

What is the main problem of the actor? It is to keep the audience awake, and not let them go to sleep, then wake up and go home feeling they've wasted their money.

Work is life for me, it is the only point of life - and with it there is almost religious belief that service is everything.

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.

Acting is an everlasting search for truth.

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.

Nine books have been written about me, and there's not a word of truth in any of them.

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.

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

Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is - and not so much a matter of being real.

Shakespeare - The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.

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

[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.

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.