Editing Laurence Olivier (section)

==Technique and reputation==
Olivier's acting technique was minutely crafted, and he was known for changing his appearance considerably from role to role. By his own admission, he was addicted to extravagant make-up,{{sfn|Holden|1988|p=3}} and unlike Richardson and Gielgud, he excelled at different voices and accents.{{sfnm|1a1=O'Connor|1y=1982|1p=60|2a1=Croall|2y=2013|2p=128}}{{efn|The American film director [[William Wyler]] said that Olivier's performance in the film ''Carrie'' was "the truest and best portrayal on film of an American by an Englishman".{{sfn|Holden|1988|p=216}}}} His own description of his technique was "working from the outside in";{{sfn|Holden|1988|p=2}} he said, "I can never act as myself, I have to have a pillow up my jumper, a false nose or a moustache or wig{{space}}... I cannot come on looking like me and be someone else."{{sfn|Holden|1988|p=3}} Rattigan described how at rehearsals Olivier "built his performance slowly and with immense application from a mass of tiny details".{{sfn|Holden|1988|p=281}} This attention to detail had its critics: Agate remarked, "When I look at a watch it is to see the time and not to admire the mechanism. I want an actor to tell me Lear's time of day and Olivier doesn't. He bids me watch the wheels go round."{{sfn|Bragg|1989|p=90}}

[[File:Laurence Olivier (borders removed).jpg|thumb|alt=head and shoulders semi-profile shot of man in this thirties|Olivier in 1939]]
Tynan remarked to Olivier, "you aren't really a contemplative or philosophical actor";<ref name="tynan-interview"/> Olivier was known for the strenuous physicality of his performances in some roles. He told Tynan this was because he was influenced as a young man by [[Douglas Fairbanks]], [[Ramon Navarro]] and John Barrymore in films, and Barrymore on stage as Hamlet: "tremendously athletic. I admired that greatly, all of us did.&nbsp;... One thought of oneself, idiotically, skinny as I was, as a sort of Tarzan."<ref name="tynan-interview"/>{{efn|Billington cites one of the best known instances of Olivier's physicality: "a sense of daring [which] showed itself, physically, in such feats as his famous headlong deathfall off a 12-foot-high platform in ''Coriolanus'' (Olivier was 52 at the time)."<ref name="guardian-25-anniv"/>}} According to Morley, Gielgud was widely considered "the best actor in the world from the neck up and Olivier from the neck down."{{sfn|Morley|2001|p=123}} Olivier described the contrast thus: "I've always thought that we were the reverses of the same coin{{space}}... the top half John, all spirituality, all beauty, all abstract things; and myself as all earth, blood, humanity."<ref name="tynan-interview"/>

Olivier, a [[Classical acting|classically trained]] actor, was known to have been distrustful of [[method acting]]. In his memoir, ''[[On Acting]]'', he exhorts actors to "have [[Stanislavski]] with you in your study or in your limousine... but don't bring him onto the film set."<ref>{{cite journal|title="On Acting" (Book Review)|url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A9538949/AONE?u=anon~3a3dd173&sid=googleScholar&xid=4ce39050|last=Cunningham|first=William|journal=National Forum|volume=70|issue=3|pages=44–46|date=1990|accessdate=17 February 2023}}</ref> During production of ''[[The Prince and the Showgirl]]'', he quarrelled with [[Marilyn Monroe]], who was trained under [[Lee Strasberg]]'s method, over her acting process.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2011/11/24/142743162/prince-and-the-show-girl|title=Nightmares On The Set: 'Prince and The Show Girl'|last=Blair|first=Elizabeth|website=NPR|date=24 November 2011|accessdate=17 February 2023}}</ref> Similarly, an anecdote casts him as offering [[Dustin Hoffman]], enduring physical travails while playing in ''[[Marathon Man (film)|Marathon Man]]'', a curt suggestion: "why don't you just try acting?"<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/method-to-the-madness-3-actors-that-took-method-acting-to-the-next-level/|title=Method To The Madness: 3 Actors That Took Method Acting To The Next Level|website=New York Film Academy|date=11 November 2015|accessdate=16 February 2023|archive-date=24 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181024112903/https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/method-to-the-madness-3-actors-that-took-method-acting-to-the-next-level/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/31/method-acting-dustin-hoffman-meryl-streep|title=Method acting can go too far – just ask Dustin Hoffman – Michael Simkins|first=Michael|last=Simkins|date=31 March 2016|website=The Guardian|access-date=9 September 2018|archive-date=3 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191203121553/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/31/method-acting-dustin-hoffman-meryl-streep|url-status=live}}</ref> Hoffman disputes the details of this account, which he claims was distorted by a journalist: he had been up all night at the [[Studio 54]] nightclub for personal rather than professional reasons and Olivier, who understood this, was joking.<ref>{{cite web |last=Dillon |first=George |title=Dustin Hoffman discusses the Laurence Olivier story |url=https://georgedillon.com/workshops/video-links/dustin-hoffman-discusses-the-laurence-olivier-story/ |access-date=24 July 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite episode|title=Dustin Hoffman|series=Inside the Actors Studio|date=18 June 2006|season=12|number=12}}</ref>

Together with Richardson and Gielgud, Olivier was internationally recognised as one of the "great trinity of theatrical knights"<ref name="strachan"/> who dominated the British stage during the middle and later decades of the 20th century.<ref name="heilpern"/> In an obituary tribute in ''The Times'', Bernard Levin wrote, "What we have lost with Laurence Olivier is ''glory''. He reflected it in his greatest roles; indeed he walked clad in it—you could practically see it glowing around him like a nimbus.{{space}}... no one will ever play the roles he played as he played them; no one will replace the splendour that he gave his native land with his genius."<ref name="levin-obit-times"/> Billington commented:

{{Blockquote|[Olivier] elevated the art of acting in the twentieth century&nbsp;... principally by the overwhelming force of his example. Like Garrick, Kean, and Irving before him, he lent glamour and excitement to acting so that, in any theatre in the world, an Olivier night raised the level of expectation and sent spectators out into the darkness a little more aware of themselves and having experienced a transcendent touch of ecstasy. That, in the end, was the true measure of his greatness.{{sfn|Billington|2004}}}}

After Olivier's death, Gielgud reflected, "He followed in the theatrical tradition of Kean and Irving. He respected tradition in the theatre, but he also took great delight in breaking tradition, which is what made him so unique. He was gifted, brilliant, and one of the great controversial figures of our time in theatre, which is a virtue and not a vice at all."{{sfn|Munn|2007|p=269}}

Olivier said in 1963 that he believed he was born to be an actor,{{sfn|Holden|1988|p=7}} but his colleague [[Peter Ustinov]] disagreed; he commented that although Olivier's great contemporaries were clearly predestined for the stage, "Larry could have been a notable ambassador, a considerable minister, a redoubtable cleric. At his worst, he would have acted the parts more ably than they are usually lived."{{sfn|Ustinov|1978|p=279}} The director David Ayliff agreed that acting did not come instinctively to Olivier as it did to his great rivals. He observed, "Ralph [Richardson] was a natural actor, he couldn't stop being a perfect actor; Olivier did it through sheer hard work and determination."<ref name="Ayliff interview"/> The American actor [[William Redfield (actor)|William Redfield]] had a similar view:

{{Blockquote|Ironically enough, Laurence Olivier is less gifted than Marlon Brando. He is even less gifted than Richard Burton, Paul Scofield, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud. But he is still the definitive actor of the twentieth century. Why? Because he wanted to be. His achievements are due to dedication, scholarship, practice, determination and courage. He is the bravest actor of our time.{{sfn|Darlington|1968|p=91}}|}}

In comparing Olivier and the other leading actors of his generation, Ustinov wrote, "It is of course vain to talk of who is and who is not the greatest actor. There is simply no such thing as a greatest actor, or painter or composer".{{sfn|Ustinov|1978|p=200}} Nonetheless, some colleagues, particularly film actors such as [[Spencer Tracy]], [[Humphrey Bogart]] and [[Lauren Bacall]], came to regard Olivier as the finest of his peers.{{sfn|Bacall|2006|pages=214–215}} Peter Hall, though acknowledging Olivier as the head of the theatrical profession,{{sfn|Hall|1984|p=xi}} thought Richardson the greater actor.<ref name="walker"/> Olivier's claim to theatrical greatness lay not only in his acting, but as, in Hall's words, "the supreme man of the theatre of our time",{{sfn|Hall|1984|p=ix}} pioneering Britain's National Theatre.<ref name="times-obit"/> As Melvyn Bragg identified, "no one doubts that the National is perhaps his most enduring monument".{{sfn|Bragg|1989|p=103}}