Laurence Olivier, A Life In Film

Sir Lawrence Olivier played life as he played his roles, rejecting the romantic notion that great art is necessarily the product of great, intellectually unapproachable genius. He was contemptuous of self-proclaimed singularity. He liked to insist that his successes derived from hard work and honed craft, habits to which many coworkers attested. Here, Time magazine's legendary film critic Richard Schickel reads between Olivier's well-spoken lines.