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 don’t know what that Method is. Acting is life, to me, and should be.
Every single night I’m nervous. You never know how the audience is going to react.
I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.
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.
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.
Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say. But the dread must never show.
Dear Lord, I’m so grateful I’m still loved.
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 cannot let well enough alone. I get restless. I have to be doing different things.
You can’t act on an empty stomach, because you’re breathing’s all wrong.
People who are very beautiful make their own laws.
I shall play Scarlett O’Hara.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
My parents were absolutely delighted that I knew what I wanted to do.
I never sleep for more than five hours, hardly ever.