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.
Laurence OlivierRead
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.
Interpretation
The actor's role is to help others understand and explore their own emotions and humanity.
Laurence Olivier emphasizes the unique position of the actor in society, asserting that their work transcends mere performance. Instead, it serves a deeper purpose by fostering an understanding of human emotions and experiences, inviting audiences to reflect on their own hearts and lives through the lens of storytelling and acting.
In practice
This quote could be shared at an acting workshop to inspire aspiring actors.
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.
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.
I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers. I don't think that's the right way of making a decision about whether you're going to back a film or not.
It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.
As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.
I create enclosed spaces mainly by means of thick concrete walls. The primary reason is to create a place for the individual, a zone for oneself within society. When the external factors of a city's environment require the wall to be without openings, the interior must be especially full and satisfying.
In Hollywood, they think they know it all. You, as a writer, are essentially an outsider. Novelists and short-story writers, especially.
An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?
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