Vivien Leigh Quotes & Sayings

Things are simple when you're going to die. — Vivien Leigh

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

Streetcar is the most wonderful, wonderful play. — Vivien Leigh

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." — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

Who could quarrel with Clark Gable? We got on well. Whenever anyone on the set was tired or depressed, it was Gable who cheered that person up. Then the newspapers began printing the story that Gable and I were not getting on. This was so ridiculous it served only as a joke. From the time on the standard greeting between Clark and myself became, 'How are you not getting on today?' — Vivien Leigh

It's much easier to make people cry than to laugh. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

Life is too short to work so hard. — Vivien Leigh

I think any classical training in the theatre is of enormous value. — Vivien Leigh

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

I'm not afraid to die. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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

I've always been mad about cats. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

I loved fencing and dancing and elocution. — Vivien Leigh

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

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 — Vivien Leigh

I never found accents difficult, after learning languages. — Vivien Leigh

Dear Lord, I'm so grateful I'm still loved. — Vivien Leigh

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

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. — Vivien Leigh

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

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

People who are very beautiful make their own laws. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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

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

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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

My parents were absolutely delighted that I knew what I wanted to do. — Vivien Leigh

I will not be ignored. — Vivien Leigh

I always know my lines. — Vivien Leigh

I am going to be a great actress. — Vivien Leigh

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

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. — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

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 Leigh

Tired of all her efforts at Tara, Scarlett wishes to escape too: "I do want to escape too! I'm so very tired of it all! ... The South is dead, it's dead, the Yankees and the carpetbaggers have got it and there's nothing left for us." — Vivien Leigh

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. — Vivien Leigh

Every single night I'm nervous. — Vivien Leigh

Streetcar is a most wonderful, wonderful play. — Vivien Leigh

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." — Vivien Leigh

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

I know I am right for Scarlett. I can convince Mr. Selznick. — Vivien Leigh

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