• "I was educated all over the place, in England, France, Germany and Italy. Came back to England when I was 5, went straight to convent school. I imagine I was rather spoiled."
• "A lucky thing Eva Peron was. She died at 32. I'm already 45."
• "I believe that if you want something with all your heart, you get it."
• "I adore dancing."
• "I did some hard thinking while I was ill. I just felt all washed up and never wanted to see a camera or a stage again. But I mapped out a new way of living."
• "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."
• "I have every reason to be grateful-I seem to have seen everyone I meant to and there have been some hilarious moments."
• "I have just made out my will and given all the things I have and many that I haven't."
• "I need something truly beautiful to look at in hotel rooms."--On taking paintings with her when she travelled abroad
• "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."
• "I've been a godmother loads of times, but being a grandmother is better than anything."--Said after her first grandson, Neville, was born.
• "If you're in love with something, it's comparatively easy, but if you're not, then life is more difficult, isn't it?"
• "Leigh taught me how to live, your father how to love, and Jack how to be alone."--Said to step-son, Tarquin Olivier, shortly before she died.
• "Life is too short to work so hard."
• "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."
• "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."
• "I was not cast in the mold of serenity and in any case, although you may succeed in being kind at twenty you cannot be calm, with all your life still before you, and your ambitions unfulfilled. I loved my baby as every mother does, but with the clear-cut sincerity of youth I realized that I could not abandon all thought of a career on the stage. Some force within myself wouldnot be denied expression. I took the problem to my husband and asked his advice. He was many years older than I was, a deeply kind and wise man, with that rare quality of imagination that implies tolerance and unselfishness. We decided that I should continue my studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. We took a tiny house in Little Stanhope Street and got a good nanny for the baby."
• "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."
• "Her Ladyship is fucking bored with formalities, and would like to be known as Miss Vivien Leigh!"
On Acting
• "It was a romantic first night. I had a part that was both good and decorative, and I was helped by the entire cast, with that wonderful loyalty and generosity of the theatre world towards a newcomer. The fact that I was young and unknown caught the imagination of the audience. The roar of applause when the final curtain fell told me that the miracle had happened. I had arrived." ~ Vivien discussing her opening night in The Mask of Virtue
• "All day long you're really leading up to the evening's performance. To time everything correctly, you have to take care of yourself-which is a very difficult thing to do, because it's highly emotional."
• "I am not a film star, I am an actress. Being a film star is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity. Actresses go on for a long time and there are always marvelous parts to play."
• "Every single night I'm nervous. You never know how the audience is going to react."
• "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."
• "Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say. But the dread must never show."
• "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."
• "You can do things reasonably well, even if you dislike them very much. I've been very fortunate. I've done mostly plays in my life that I loved to do."
• "It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh”
• "Some commonsense streak in me kept me from having my head turned, made me understand how easy it would be to slip, unless I compensated for my lack of experience by hard work. I struggled far more to keep at the top than to get there."
• "Oh! You boys are crazy! I don't want to be a movie actress! To sit in a beautiful Hollywood mansion and do nothing for months and months, waiting for some agent to call and say he is working on the possibility of a picture at MGM and then wait for more months--why, that's not my idea of beng an actress at all! To be an actress is to go down to the theatre every evening, and to go out on stage before an audience and play all kinds of parts. The sage is where I exist, where I feel alive and powerful. When I stand on it I am the queen and I do what I think is right. I don't have to obey some megalomaniac director who tells me to look left or right, to do more of this and less of that. My whole life has meaning and purpose when I am working in the theatre. I love to go into the stage door and to go into my dressing room, where I feel warm and secure, as I never could in a movie studio. I love the routine of reading my mail, making up, dressing, and thinking about the performance. I love the company and all the workers backstage. When I am in Hollywood, I feel desperately lonely. I call up my friends and ask, 'What are you doing?' I never do that when I am working in the theatre; my friends come to my dressing room after the show and I am delighted to see them all, and we go outfor super, either at the flat or some little restaurant where we can sit up till all hours, talking shop, exchanging ideas and making plans. No! I am dedicated to the theatre, and always will be, so there." --In response to Brian Aherne and Jack marivale when they told her she was at her best on screen
On making Gone with the Wind
• "I wanted to play Scarlett from the first time I read the book. That was in London when I was appearing in a flop play. I fell in love with the novel and I gave the rest of the cast copies of the book as opening night presents. I told them, 'If I ever go to Hollywood, it will be to play Gone With the Wind.' They all laughed and said I was crazy."
• "It's really very miserable and going terribly slow. I am such a fool to have done it."
• "Larry won't play Rhett, but I shall play Scarlett O'Hara. Wait and see."--Vivien to friends during the filming of 21 Days when they told Laurence Olivier he'd make a good Rhett Butler
• "I hope I've one thing that Scarlett never had. A sense of humor. I want some joy out of life... And she had one thing I hope I never have. Selfish egotism...Scarlett was a fascinating person whatever she did, but she was never a good person. She was too petty, too self-centered...but one thing about her was admirable. Her courage. She had more than I'll ever have."
• "When Scarlett wanted something from life, she schemed about how to get it. That was her trouble. I just plunge ahead without thinking. That's my trouble. Every so often I bump into stone walls and have to pick myself up and climb over them."
On Manic Depression
• "Why can't I have a decent, clean illness?"
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