Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh
Vivian Mary Hartley, later known as Vivien Leigh and Lady Olivier, was an English stage and film actress. She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress for her performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Windand Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway version of Tovarich...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth5 November 1913
CityDarjeeling, India
It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh
You can't act on an empty stomach, because you're breathing's all wrong.
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.
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.
In Britain, an attractive woman is somehow suspect. If there is talent as well, it is overshadowed. Beauty and brains just can't be entertained; someone has been too extravagant. This does not happen in America or on the Continent, for the looks of a woman are considered a positive advertisement for her gifts and don't detract from them.
Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn't going to be any war. . . . If either of you boys says 'war' just once again, I'll go in the house and slam the door.
Scarlett, from the ashes of the war-ravaged land at Tara, remembering what she was taught by her father in happier times: "As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they're not going to lick me! I'm going to live through this, and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again - no, nor any of my folks! If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill! As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
I realize that the memories I cherish most are not the first night successes, but of simple, everyday things: walking through our garden in the country after rain; sitting outside a cafe in Provence, drinking the vin de pays; staying at a little hotel in an English market town with Larry, in the early days after our marriage, when he was serving in the Fleet Air Arm, and I was touring Scotland, so that we had to make long treks to spend weekends together.
Some critics saw fit to say that I was a great actress. I thought that was a foolish, wicket thing to say because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry.
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.
I have just made out my will and given all the things I have and many that I haven't.
A lucky thing Eva Peron was. She died at 32. I'm already 45.
I know I am right for Scarlett. I can convince Mr. Selznick.
I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.