Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland Quotes

“Playing good girls in the ’30s was difficult, when the fad was to play bad girls. Actually I think playing bad girls is a bore; I have always had more luck with good girl roles because they require more from an actress.”

“The TV business is soul crashing, talent destroying, and human being destroying. These men in their black towers don’t know what they are doing. It’s slave labour. There is no elegance left in anybody. They have no taste. Movies are being financed by conglomerates, which take a writeoff if they don’t work. The only people who fight for what the public deserves are artists.”

“The one thing that you simply have to remember all the time that you are there is that Hollywood is an oriental city. As long as you do that, you might survive. If you try to equate it with anything else, you’ll perish.

“We were like a stock company at Warners. We didn’t know any of the stars from the other studios.”

“Famous people feel that they must perpetually be on the crest of the wave, not realising that it is against all the rules of life. You can’t be on top all the time; it isn’t natural.”

Olivia on Clark Gable
“Clark Gable was highly professional. He was a bigger star than we can create today. I was just a mini-star when we did Gone With The Wind. I was afraid to talk to him. People can’t understand it now, but we were in awe. Clark Gable didn’t open supermarkets.”

Olivia on Errol Flynn
“I had a very big crush on Errol Flynn during Captain Blood. I thought he was absolutely smashing for three solid years, but he never guessed. Then he had one on me but nothing came of it. I’m not going to regret that; it could have ruined my life.”

Olivia on Howard Hughes:
“He was six-feet-three, three-and-a-half, thin, and had kind of a shy manner. And yet, in a whole community where the men everyday played heroes on the screen and didn’t do anything heroic in life, here was this man who was a real hero. And that impressed me very much, and his rather shy manner, but you still wouldn’t expect that he would have the insight that helped in a moment of great distress.”