Top 50 Vivien Leigh Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is too short to work so hard.”

— Vivien Leigh

2. “Dear Lord, I’m so grateful I’m still loved.”

— Vivien Leigh

3. “I will not be ignored.”

— Vivien Leigh

4. “Most of us have compromised with life. Those who fight for what they want will always thrill us.”

— Vivien Leigh

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

— Vivien Leigh

6. “Things are simple when you’re going to die.”

— Vivien Leigh

7. “I shall play Scarlett O’Hara.”

— Vivien Leigh

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

— Vivien Leigh

9. “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

10. “I never sleep for more than five hours, hardly ever.”

— Vivien Leigh

11. “I don’t know what that Method is. Acting is life, to me, and should be.”

— Vivien Leigh

12. “People who are very beautiful make their own laws.”

— Vivien Leigh

13. “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

14. “I am going to be a great actress.”

— Vivien Leigh

15. “I’ve always been mad about cats.”

— Vivien Leigh

16. “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 Leigh

17. “I’m not young. What’s wrong with that?”

— Vivien Leigh

18. “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

19. “My parents were absolutely delighted that I knew what I wanted to do.”

— Vivien Leigh

20. “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

21. “I’ve been a godmother loads of times, but being a grandmother is better than anything.”

— Vivien Leigh

22. “I know I am right for Scarlett. I can convince Mr. Selznick.”

— Vivien Leigh

23. “I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.”

— Vivien Leigh

24. “I think any classical training in the theatre is of enormous value.”

— Vivien Leigh

25. “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

26. “Every single night I’m nervous. You never know how the audience is going to react.”

— Vivien Leigh

27. “It’s much easier to make people cry than to laugh.”

— Vivien Leigh

28. “I need something truly beautiful to look at in hotel rooms.”

— Vivien Leigh

29. “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

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

— Vivien Leigh

31. “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

32. “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

33. “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

34. “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

35. “I never found accents difficult, after learning languages.”

— Vivien Leigh

36. “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

37. “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

38. “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

39. “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

40. “You can’t act on an empty stomach, because you’re breathing’s all wrong.”

— Vivien Leigh

41. “I cannot let well enough alone. I get restless. I have to be doing different things.”

— Vivien Leigh

42. “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

43. “I was sent successively to schools in France, Italy and Bavaria, and this erratic education was a great help afterwards.”

— Vivien Leigh

44. “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

45. “Every single night I’m nervous.”

— Vivien Leigh

46. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

47. “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

48. “I always know my lines.”

— Vivien Leigh

49. “Streetcar is the most wonderful, wonderful play.”

— Vivien Leigh

50. “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