Vivien Leigh - biography

“I am going to be a great actress.”

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

“I think any classical training in the theatre is of enormous value.”

“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.”

“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 need something truly beautiful to look at in hotel rooms.”

“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.”

“A lucky thing Eva Peron was.  She died at 32.  I’m already 45.”

“I’m not afraid to die.”

“You know the passage where Scarlett voices her happiness that her mother is dead, so that she can’t see what a bad girl Scarlett has become?  Well, that’s me.”

“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.”

“I never found accents difficult, after learning languages.”

“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.”

“Dear Lord, I’m so grateful I’m still loved.”

“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.”

“Life is too short to work so hard.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My parents were absolutely delighted that I knew what I wanted to do.”

“Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say.  But the dread must never show.”

“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.”

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

“I adore dancing.”

“I always know my lines.”

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

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

“I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.”

“I’m a Scorpio, and Scorpios eat themselves out and burn themselves up like me.”

“I’m not young.  What’s wrong with that?”

“I’ve always been mad about cats.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Streetcar is a most wonderful, wonderful play.”

Vivien Leigh has appeared in the following films:
Look Up and Laugh (1935)
Things Are Looking Up (1935)
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1935)
The Village Squire (1935)
Fire Over England (1937)
Dark Journey (1937)
Storm in a Teacup (1937)
A Yank at Oxford (1938)
Sidewalks of London (1938)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
21 Days (1940)
Waterloo Bridge (1940)
That Hamilton Woman (1941)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Anna Karenina (1948)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
The Deep Blue Sea (1955)
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)
Ship of Fools (1965)