Quote • MRS PATRICK CAMPBELL • The Cult of Personality

‘Most successful actors and actresses are entirely dependent upon personality for their effect, aided, as the case may be, by the charm of their diction or their natural grace of gesture or personal beauty. Mediocre artists have risen to a considerable position on this quality of “personality”. They never transcend it. Plays are written around it, and many plays have been sacrificed to it. In an Ibsen play, it is a very great misfortune, imprisoning the artist in his own narrow circle of individualism.’

My Life and Some Letters by Mrs Patrick Campbell, published by Hutchinson & Co, 1922.

Originally published on R&V 20-05-07