Vivien Leigh Quotes

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.

Classical plays require more imagination and more general training to be able to do. That's why I like playing Shakespeare better than anything else.

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.

Having lost Rhett, she can always return to the land - to Tara, to soak up its strength. . . . Tara! . . . Home. I'll go home, and I'll think of some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!

Dear Lord, I'm so grateful I'm still loved.

My husband, who's the greatest actor in the world, can do anything. Look at what he did in The Critic and Oedipus. In every role he gets-he did this in Richard the Third-there's nothing he can't do, nothing. Just nothing.

You can't act on an empty stomach, because you're breathing's all wrong.

I cannot let well enough alone. I get restless. I have to be doing different things.

I think acting is an important profession, because acting can give you pleasure and can teach you at the same time, and that is a good thing.

I'm a Scorpio, and Scorpios eat themselves out and burn themselves up like me.

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.

I cannot let well enough alone. I get restless. I have to be doing different things. I am a very impatient person and headstrong. If I've made up my mind to do something, I can't be persuaded out of it.

I'm not young. What's wrong with that?

I never sleep for more than five hours, hardly ever.

A lucky thing Eva Peron was. She died at 32. I'm already 45.

Streetcar is a most wonderful, wonderful play.

Every single night I'm nervous.

I've been a godmother loads of times, but being a grandmother is better than anything.

My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don't pretend and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.

I know I am right for Scarlett. I can convince Mr. Selznick.

Most of us have compromised with life. Those who fight for what they want will always thrill us.

Scarlett: You should die of shame to leave me here alone and helpless. Rhett: You helpless? (laughs) Heaven help the Yankees if they capture you.

My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.

Streetcar is the most wonderful, wonderful play.

On the road, they join the bedraggled remnants of a column of exhausted Confederate soldiers evacuating burning Atlanta. Rhett makes her take note of the scene: "Take a good look, my dear. It's a historic moment. You can tell your grandchildren how you watched the Old South disappear one night."

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.

I need something truly beautiful to look at in hotel rooms.

My first husband and I are still good friends and there is no earthly reason why I should not see him. Larry and I are very much in love.

Life is too short to work so hard.

When I was at school at Paris, I had special lessons from Mademoiselle Antoine, an actress at the Comedie Francaise, and I was taken to every sort of play. I felt very grand.

I am going to be a great actress.

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 loved fencing and dancing and elocution.

I don't know what that Method is. Acting is life, to me, and should be.

I shall play Scarlett O'Hara.

Every single night I'm nervous. You never know how the audience is going to react.

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.

I was sent successively to schools in France, Italy and Bavaria, and this erratic education was a great help afterwards.

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.

Scarlett tells Mammy: "I'm too young to be a widow." She weeps to her mother: "My life is over. Nothing will ever happen to me anymore." Her mother comforts her: "It's only natural to want to look young and be young when you are young."

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.

I've always been mad about cats.

I always know my lines.

It's much easier to make people cry than to 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.

I never found accents difficult, after learning languages.

I have just made out my will and given all the things I have and many that I haven't.

But I remember the morning after The Mask of Virtue-which is the first play I did at the West End-that some critics saw fit to be as foolish as to say that I was a great actress. And I thought, that was a foolish, wicked thing to say, because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry. And it took me years to learn enough to live up to what they said-for those first notices. I find it so stupid. I remember the critic very well, and have never forgiven him.