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Success Quote by Janet Leigh

"In order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction"

About this Quote

Leigh is quietly pushing back against the glamorous myth that acting is pure escape. Her “springboard” metaphor treats facts not as shackles but as propulsion: you don’t soar by denying reality, you launch off it. That’s a working actor’s philosophy, spoken from inside an industry that sells fantasies while demanding believability down to the last breath. The line lands because it refuses the usual binary of truth versus fiction. Leigh frames them as a blend you can’t separate if you want a dream to feel livable.

The subtext is craft. “Facts” are the given circumstances: a character’s history, the physical world of a scene, the small logistical truths that make behavior credible. Leigh isn’t romanticizing improvisation or “magic”; she’s describing how imagination gets traction. The “touch of reality” is what keeps the audience from watching a performance and instead lets them inhabit it. It’s also, slyly, a defense of genre work and mainstream storytelling. Even in heightened material, the details must ring true, or the dream collapses into costume.

Context matters: Leigh’s career sits at a mid-century hinge point when Hollywood’s studio polish met a growing appetite for psychological realism. Her most famous roles trade on exactly this tension, inviting viewers into scenarios that feel plausible enough to disturb. “Truth with fiction” isn’t a compromise; it’s the engine of screen acting itself, where the lie has to be disciplined until it reads as human.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Leigh, Janet. (n.d.). In order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-order-to-dream-you-need-to-have-a-springboard-167688/

Chicago Style
Leigh, Janet. "In order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-order-to-dream-you-need-to-have-a-springboard-167688/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"In order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/in-order-to-dream-you-need-to-have-a-springboard-167688/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

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Janet Leigh (July 6, 1927 - October 3, 2004) was a Actress from USA.

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