Apart from her looks, which were magical, she possessed beautiful poise; her neck looked almost too fragile to support her head and bore it with a sense of surprise, and something of the pride of the master juggler who can make a brilliant maneuver appear almost accidental. She also had something else: an attraction of the most perturbing nature I had ever encounter. It may have been the strangely touching spark of dignity in her that enslaved the ardent legion of her admirers.
Laurence Olivier on meeting Vivien early in their careers

 

The Oliviers brought speech to the English stage. Vivien was visual and Larry was oral. She learnt about 'the word' from him. She had such intelligence, beauty and style. She never left the stage-door unless impeccably dressed. She was always amusing. And she was honest, totally and utterly honest. She was a woman, and yet always somehow a child.
Peter Wyngarde

 

She had the kind of festiveness and longing to make everything an occasion that people usually have more when they're quite young. I never thought of Vivien as a fabulous star. Vivien never acted as though she was one.
Lucinda Ballard Dietz

 

She always made you feel that you were the most important person in her life. Apart from her great physical beauty, she was the kindest of friends with the most beautiful manners. You don't get that in the theatre today. You didn't get it then.
Sally Ann Howes

I never thought it was possible to love anybody so much or quite so completely, or that anybody should be so wonderfully abundant and prodigal to me in everything I've wanted most. As we have settled down and become firmer in our minds, and more peaceful in our hearts, our life together has become so unbelievably beautiful. We have been through a terribly difficult two years...but I really believe that our love will justify itself in the end.
Laurence Olivier on early life with Vivien in Hollywood

 

She had a small talent, but the greatest determination to excel of any actress I've ever known. She'd have crawled over broken glass if she thought it would help her performance. In the scenes that counted, she excelled.
Elia Kazan, director of A Streetcar Named Desire

 

Myron [Vivien's Hollywood agent] rolled in just exactly too late, arriving about a minute and a half after the last building had fallen and burned and after the shorts were completed. With him were Larry Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Shhhhh: she's the Scarlett dark horse, and looks damned good. Not for anybody's ears but your own: it's narrowed down to Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett, and Vivien Leigh. We're making final tests this week…
David O. Selznick writing to his wife the day after filming 'the burning of Atlanta', the first scene shot for the production of Gone With the Wind (December 10^th, 1938).

 

She is charming, very beautiful, black hair and magnolia petal skin and in the movie tests I have seen, she moved me greatly. They did the paddock scene, for a test, and it is a marvelous business the way she makes you cry when she is 'making Ashley'. I understand she is not signed but far as I can tell from George Cukor et al, she is the gal.
Susan Myrick, David O. Selznick's technical adviser

 

I have the highest admiration for the way she has conducted herself. Her dignity and sweetness in her very difficult situation have won friends for her everywhere. For your private ear and not for repetition I am impressed by the remarkable number of different faces she has. In the stills you have been good enough to send me, she looks like a different person every time she is shown in a different mood.
Margaret Mitchell writing to David O. Selznick about Vivien

 

 

- On Education -

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

 

Apart from the fact that I learnt to speak several languages more or less fluently, and had an opportunity of studying diction and the theatre in many countries, I met people of all types and nationalities. They gave me that flexibility of mind which is so necessary to an artist, and taught me, I hope, understanding. Through knowing them I have always been able to recognize the characters I play, and love them.

 

- On Family Life -

I was under nineteen when I married, and not quite twenty when my daughter was born. I felt too young to be the mother of a child, and very lacking in the qualities of restfulness and serenity which a mother should have. How many times since then Scarlett O'Hara's lines, speaking of her mother, have sprung to my mind: 'I always wanted to be like her, calm and kind. I certainly have turned out disappointingly.

 

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 would not 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 nannie for the baby.

 

- On Acting -

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.

 

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, the play that brought her instant fame

 

 

 

Her life was extra-ordinarily rich and varied. She lived in her fifty years what other people might in ten lives.
Mills Martin, childhood friend

 

I try hard to concentrate my thoughts in gratitude for the inestimable gift that we have enjoyed for so long at her generous hands, of the light of her loving friendship and though that light has now gone out, it will always shine on all those who ever knew her, however slightly. She really illuminated life and though deeply sad you must be very proud of someone who has woven an an imperishable bond between all those who loved her & whom she loved.
Roger Furse, writing to Vivien's mother

 

I will miss her, her laughs and her screams, her humour and her toughness and her tenderness.
Simone Signoret

 

Condolence is sent for comfort, but there is no comfort to be sought when something so exquisite & brilliant & unique as Vivien is torn away from you. I think of all her demanding roles that the most difficult was her own life's part...Poor valiant little heroine.
Lady Diana Cooper

 

To talk of Vivien Leigh in public so soon after her death is almost unbearable difficult for me...What seems to me most remarkable, as for as her career was concerned, was her steady determination to be a fine stage actress, to make her career in the living theatre, when, with her natural beauty, skill, and grace of movement, gifts which were of course invaluable in helping to create the magic of her personality, she could so easily have stayed aloof and supreme in her unique position as a screen actress.
John Gielgud's address at her memorial service

 

Tears mingled with the rain as the great names of stage and screen gathered to say their final good-byes to one of the loveliest and most talented actresses of our time.
South Wales Echo