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Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trinity of male actors who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles.
His family had no theatrical connections, but Olivier’s father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Coward‘s Private Lives, and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, building it into a highly respected company. There his most celebrated roles included Shakespeare’s Richard III and Sophocles‘s Oedipus. In the 1950s Olivier was an independent actor-manager, but his stage career was in the doldrums until he joined the avant garde English Stage Company in 1957 to play the title role in The Entertainer, a part he later played on film. From 1963 to 1973 he was the founding director of Britain’s National Theatre, running a resident company that fostered many future stars. His own parts there included the title role in Othello (1965) and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1970).
Among Olivier’s films are Wuthering Heights (1939), Rebecca (1940), and a trilogy of Shakespeare films as actor-director: Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955). His later films included Spartacus (1960), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), Sleuth (1972), Marathon Man (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). His television appearances included an adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence (1960), Long Day’s Journey into Night (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976), Brideshead Revisited (1981) and King Lear (1983).
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o Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.
Without acting, I cannot breathe.
o Of all the things I’ve done in life, directing a motion picture is the most beautiful. It’s the most exciting and the nearest than an interpretive craftsman, such as an actor, can possibly get to being a creator.
o If I wasn’t an actor, I think I’d have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. Art is a little bit larger than life – it’s an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.
o [In 1979] You must have – besides intuition and sensitivity – a cutting edge that allows you to reach what you need. Also, you have to know life – bastards included – and it takes a bit of one to know one, don’t you think?
o [The only acting advice he would give] What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying? Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult. All this talk about the Method, the Method! WHAT method? I thought each of us had our OWN method!
o The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.
o [First address in the House of Lords, 1971] 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. Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.
o We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are – politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
o My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.
o [On Charles Laughton] The only actor of genius I’ve ever met.
o [On Marilyn Monroe] A professional amateur. Look at that face – she could be five years old.
o [On Marlon Brando] Brando acted with an empathy and an instinctual understanding that not even the greatest technical performers could possibly match.
o I’m like a vintage wine. You have to drink me quickly before I turn sour. I’m almost used up now and I can feel the end coming. That’s why I’m taking money now. I’ve got nothing to leave my family but the money I can make from films. Nothing is beneath me if it pays well. I’ve earned the right to damn well grab whatever I can in the time I’ve got left.
o [In 1983] If you’re 75, which I am, it’s damned hard to find parts. Lear is the only star part for an old man that I know of – I’ve never heard of a good play about Methusaleh. I played the title role only once before the Old Vic. I was 39. When you’re younger, Lear doesn’t feel real. When you get to my age, you are Lear in every nerve of your body.
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