Reading about Queen Victoria has been a passion of mine since, as a child, I came across Laurence Housman's play 'Happy and Glorious,' with its Ernest Shepard illustrations.
A. N. Wilson
For me as a Welsh actor, Richard Burton is one of my biggest idols. And I've got so many: Peter O'Toole, Laurence Olivier and Oliver Reed. If they got 'Hunky Dory' and 'Citadel' offered to them, they would do completely different jobs on both of them.
Aneurin Barnard
I would have liked Sir Laurence Olivier to ask me to go to the Old Vic and let me play all the roles Judi Dench got.
Anne Reid
I really think the more talent people have, the more polite they are: Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness always arrived on time and were impeccably behaved. It's only the gutter snipes who leave their lipstick on the studio floor - and that's just the men.
Antony Armstrong-Jones
'Hamlet' was the first movie I saw. In 1948, my mother said, 'I'm going to take you to see 'Hamlet' with Laurence Olivier.' She was worried about taking me to it because she wasn't sure I was old enough to understand it or to maybe be adversely affected by it, but I got recordings of it and memorized all the soliloquies.
Christopher Lloyd
Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what's serious. I think that's true. Sometimes things are really funny if you're absolutely earnest. If you're really serious, it's hilarious.
Christopher Walken
A fan once stopped me outside a theatre and gave me as a gift a signed photograph of Sir Laurence Olivier. It was strange, but nice, too.
David Alan Basche
I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.
David Antin
On my wall, along with my favorite football players and baseball players, I had Marlon Brando and Sir Laurence Olivier. These were childhood idols.
Dennis Haysbert
I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.
Denzel Washington
I had a hard time calling Laurence Oliver 'Larry.'
Diane Lane
An ideal movie would be, like - to get this to happen, I have to work so much harder - but imagine Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy... Who else? Donald Faison. Directed by Steven Spielberg. That would be awesome.
Donald Faison
From the ages of five to twelve, I attended the Saint Laurence O'Toole elementary school in Lawrence, a city next to Methuen, and was taught by sisters of the Catholic order of Notre Dame de Namour. I enjoyed all my subjects there. I do not remember ever learning any science, except for mathematics.
Elias James Corey
I come from a family of actors. My grandfather was like a Laurence Olivier with the Comedie Francaise. Since I was four I went every week to the Comedie Francaise. My aunt and grandmother were there, but my grandfather was a big star.
Emmanuelle Seigner
Laurence Fishburne is my mentor.
George Eads
When I came into the acting profession, it was quite hierarchical. You didn't sit at the same table as the leading actor. Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud... these were very, very intimidating and powerful people.
Helen Mirren
I grew up with the great Sir Laurence Olivier, and I think it's fair to say that a lot of actors of my age were influenced by his very individual vocal delivery. He was a showman who would always play to the gallery.
Ian Holm
There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company. But you also end up in the company of people you don't admire, including some rather dodgy politicians.
Ian Mckellen
There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I've spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it's very flattering to be in their company.
I wouldn't write anything autobiographical. If you've lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it's a little bit vain, it seems to me.
James Lee Burke
Steve Laurence is the only person that was on the first 'Tonight Show,' right to the end. He was a little high school boy, 14 years old.
The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.
Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.
I'm friendly with Laurence Luckinbill. He's a great man.
I never thought I would sing or dance - ever, ever, ever. My idea was to be Laurence Olivier or Peter Lorre or some great classical actor. I thought I'd be a character actor.
I figure there are a few actors like Marlon Brando, George C. Scott and Laurence Olivier who have been touched by the hand of God. I'm in the next bunch.
Some of those early roles were unactable. Even Laurence Olivier couldn't have done anything with them. The dialog ran to cardboard passages such as, 'I love you. You can rely on me, darling. I'll wait.' It was all I could do to keep from adding, 'With egg on my face.'
I started being interested in acting when I heard the voices of Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness. I've had the great privilege of working with Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Anthony Hopkins. These are people who inspire the work that I do.
Laurence Fishburne - he's a great actor, but he dances and sings, too? He can just do everything.
The tradition has always been that in Roman films, the Romans are always British, and it's usually posh British: Laurence Olivier and his ilk. My take on all this was that it's a metaphor for empire and the end of empire.
My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.
Yes, it's true, I've been called the Laurence Olivier of spoofs. I guess that would make Laurence Olivier the Leslie Nielsen of Shakespeare.
During 'Manchurian Candidate' - that role originated with Laurence Harvey, and I studied everything he did. I would never be able to reproduce that performance, but I got a lot of ideas from watching it.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt, with those 'Oceans' films they do, they get to work together, make a whole lot of money, and make a major film statement. Imagine if once a year, myself, Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, James Earl Jones, we did some relevant film together to make a statement.
I studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which was founded by Laurence Olivier and has alumni like Jeremy Irons and Daniel Day Lewis. It's a very erudite institution; its ethos, really, was always theatre-based.
Developing a new designer colouring book with Laurence King has been a real passion project of mine.
To have a childhood surrounded by people like Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh sounds glitzy, but for years I wanted to repress it. I couldn't take that kind of power and success.
Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it's true, and look at the results.
But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theater and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud.
Even if I hadn't been cast as Doctor Who, my acting would probably have been influenced by William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and all of the other guys. Because those were the actors that I really watched every moment of, as opposed to Laurence Olivier.
I've worked with some terrific actors. The list of guys that came on the 'Columbo' show, I mean they were world-class actors from all over the world - Oskar Werner, Laurence Harvey, Donald Pleasence, you know... foreigners.
Pop managers are fixed in the dramatic stock character repertoire too, ever since the first British pop film musical, Wolf Mankowitz's 'Expresso Bongo' of 1959, with Cliff Richard as Bongo Herbert and Laurence Harvey as his manager. The key components were cast as X parts gay, X parts Jewish and triple X opportunistic.
I wanted to be Laurence Olivier, basically, to be a great classical actor, and also be able to do modern things.
I've known Laurence Fishburne for about twenty years.
