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
I think Edith Evans is the most marvelous actress in the world and she can look beautiful. People who aren't beautiful can look beautiful. She can look as beautiful as Diana Cooper, who was the most beautiful woman in the world.
People think that if you look fairly reasonable, you can't possibly act, and as I only care about acting, I think beauty can be a great handicap.
English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously.
Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.
When I come into the theatre I get a sense of security. I love an audience. I love people, and I act because I like trying to give pleasure to people.
It's much easier to make people cry than to laugh.
People who are very beautiful make their own laws.
I'm not a film star, I am an actress. Being a film star is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity.
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.