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.

In spite of a heavy disguise, a few days' growth on my face, dark glasses, a beret and one of William's jackets that fitted me not at all, as I emerged from a hotel in Lecce, a young fisherman pointed me out to his friends and said "Lavrenche Olivaire." It was not all that amazing; if you're not known in Italy, you're not known anywhere.

Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.

Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is - and not so much a matter of being real.

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.

I have to act to live.

[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.