Vivien Leigh

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Vivien on Laurence Olivier:

That’s the man I’m going to marry. [Reminded that she and he are already married] It doesn’t matter. I’ll still marry him one day!

I’d rather live a short life with Larry than face a long one without him.

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.

Lady Olivier wishes to say that Sir Laurence Olivier has asked for a divorce in order to marry Miss Joan Plowright. She will naturally do whatever he wishes. (May 20, 1960)

More than anything else I’d like to film Macbeth with Larry. (May 29, 1960)

Vivien On Other Women

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

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.

Vivien on Egypt:

The more I hear about Egypt, the more I wish we could dig all the sand away and that all those marvelous sphinxes and temples and buildings could be seen again.

Vivien on What Happened To Scarlett O’Hara After Rhett Butler Walked Out On Her:

I think she probably became a better woman. But I don’t think she ever stopped loving him.

If She Had Her Life Over Again, Would She Want It Any Different?

No. I would want to be an actress and marry Larry. I would want everything again, except the last few months.

Vivien on Vivien:

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

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.

I do long to have another baby, but I would have to stop work if I became pregnant and do precious little for nine months. I don’t think that would suit my nature.

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.

I lived a long time in a very flattering, very artificial, very insincere kind of world- the world of an actress.

I’ve always been mad about cats.

I never passed an examination until I was in Germany and I won a prize in Scripture. My school reports used to say ‘Must Concentrate More’ and I can’t really add six and four.

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.