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Tuesday, 22 May 2007

Happy Birthday, Larry

It's Lord Laurence Olivier's 100th birthday. On his death back in 1989, this radio anouncement summed his career up neatly:

Laurence Olivier, the greatest actor in the world, died today.
Everyone else moves up one notch.
I actually met Lord Olivier (or Larry, as I used to call him). In my career I've drifted in and out of professional acting and back in the late '70s I was waiting outside the stage door of a London theatre for an audition when The Man Himself walked up to me and said, in that effortless delivery of his, "Excuse me" and brushed past inside.

As a young actor, I always took his words of kind encouragement and advice to heart.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousTuesday, 22 May 2007 at 13:20:00 GMT-7

    Sigh...such good fortune is ever yours, my friend.

    Seeing as my greatest endeavor as an actor was portraying Jacob Marley in a high school theatrical abortion that was Scrooge: the Musical, I would have been overjoyed to have even been commanded to "Sod off" by someone even half of Olivier's caliber.

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