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
My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.
Interpretation
Olivier reflects on how his achievements in theater and film fulfill different aspects of his professional life.
Laurence Olivier expresses that the triumphs he experienced on stage brought him unparalleled joy and connection to others, while his achievements in film offered him profound personal satisfaction and introspection. This highlights the dual nature of success, where external recognition and internal fulfillment play unique roles in an artist's journey.
In practice
In a speech at a theater awards ceremony.
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.
Ask me what makes a champion runner, and I will tell you it helps to have the great good sense to choose your parents carefully.
We have done some of these in Bangladesh. Whenever I see a problem, I immediately go and create a company. That's what I did all my life.
I've done everything I've wanted to do. I have three children, I have grandchildren, I have books, I did movies, I've directed movies; I've done almost everything I've wanted to do.
Anyplace we go in the world, when someone asks us what we do, we feel an immense pride in saying, 'FBI.'
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
Whether we are able to be a complete success or failure is in such critical balance that every smallest human test of integrity every smallest moment-to-moment decision tips the scales affirmatively or negatively.
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