He could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles C. Bennett, who met Laurence Olivier in 1927. One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played Romeo and Mercutio in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was Ophelia to his Hamlet in a special performance at Kronberg Castle, Elsinore, Denmark. In 1940 she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights, her film was Gone with the Wind. Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England, 21 Days Together and That Hamilton Woman. There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money. In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire. She won her second Oscar for bringing Blanche DuBois to the screen. "Carrie" was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers. More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer, which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of Archie Rice's daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was in the film as well. They two married soon after the release of "The Entertainer".


Wild Geese II (1985): $300,000
The Bounty (1984): $100,000
Clash of the Titans (1981): $300,000
Inchon (1981): $1,000,000
The Jazz Singer (1980): $1,000,000
The Boys from Brazil (1978): $725,000
The Betsy (1978): $400,000
A Bridge Too Far (1977): $200,000
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976): $75,000 (for 2 days)
Sleuth (1972): $200,000
Lady Caroline Lamb (1972): £ 20,000 (for 5 days)
Khartoum (1966): £ 250,000
The Moon and Sixpence (1959): $100,000
Rebecca (1940): $50,000
Wuthering Heights (1939): $20,000

1985: When presenting at the Oscars, he forgot to name the Best Picture nominees. He simply opened the envelope and proclaimed, "Amadeus (1984)". 10/97: Ranked #46 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. Father, with Jill Esmond, of son Tarquin Olivier. He and Roberto Benigni are the only two actors to have directed themselves in Oscar-winning performances. In the book "Melting the Stone: A Journey Around My Father" by his son Richard Olivier, Richard describes Laurence as being more interested in his work than in his children; he never looked back fondly on his career and would actually become depressed when he didn't have a job. 2001: Ranked tenth in the Orange Film Survey of greatest British actors. Brother-in-law of race car driver Jack Esmond. Attended The Central School of Speech and Drama in London. 2004: His film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1948) is still, to date, the only film of a Shakespeare play to win the Oscar for Best Picture, and the only one to actually win an Oscar for acting (Olivier for Best Actor). Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890- 1945". Pages 837-843. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987. He is considered by many people to be the greatest English-speaking actor of the twentieth century, even more so than Marlon Brando and Spencer Tracy. His acting in Hamlet (1948) is discussed by Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye". Wanted desperately to stage "Guys and Dolls" in the early 1970s, as he dreamed of playing Sky Masterson, but after stringing him along for several years, the board of governors of the National Theatre vetoed any chance of a production. After years of being hamstrung by the board, Olivier resigned as artistic director in 1973 without being able to name his successor. The governors appointed Peter Hall, founder of the National Theatre's great rival, the Royal Shakespeare Company, as director to replace Olivier. The move is widely seen as an insult to Olivier, who had given up an incalculable fortune in potential earnings in the commercial theater and in motion pictures to make his dream of a National Theatre a reality. However, he was honored by having the largest auditorium in the under-construction National Theatre building named after him. "Guys and Dolls" was eventually staged by the National Theatre in 1982. His oldest son Tarquin Olivier was 10 months old when Olivier left his mother, actress Jill Esmond, for Vivien Leigh in 1937. Despite Olivier virtually ignoring him after marrying Joan Plowright in 1961, Tarquin was extremely forgiving in his 1993 memoir "My Father Laurence Olivier." Tarquin contends that the rumors about his father were becoming more outrageous with each new biography and dismissed the stories that Olivier had had affairs with Danny Kaye and Kenneth Tynan as "unforgivable garbage." According to Olivier in his autobiography "Confessions of an Actor," when he went to Hollywood in the early 1930s as the "next Ronald Colman", one studio wanted to change his name to "Larry Oliver." He often wondered what his career would have been like if he kept that less-distinguished name, whether his career would have been as sorry as the name. In his 1983 autobiography "Confessions of an Actor," Olivier writes that upon meeting Marilyn Monroe preparatory to the commencement of production of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), he was convinced he was going to fall in love with her. During production, Olivier bore the brunt of Marilyn's famous indiscipline and wound up despising her. However, he admits that she was wonderful in the film, the best thing in it, her performance overshadowing his own, and that the final result was worth the aggravation. Orson Welles wrote his novel Mr. Arkadin (1955) during an extended stay with Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh. Welles was appearing at Olivier's St. James theater in London at the time in his fabled production of Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), which had been produced by Michael Todd in New York. Todd, who later made the film without Welles participation, had offered to produce a film version of "Macbeth" to be directed by and starring Olivier, but he died in 1958 before the plans could be finalized. Was gradually forced out of his position as head of the National Theatre by the board of directors after the board vetoed a production of Rolf Hochhuth's 1968 play "Soldaten" ("Soldiers"). The controversial play, championed by National Theatre dramaturge Kenneth Tynan, implied that Winston Churchill had arranged the death of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, and the fire-bombing of civilians during World War II. Olivier, who revered Churchill, backed his dramaturge, but Tynan was sacked and Olivier's position was undermined, thus compromising the independence of the National Theatre. After unsuccessfully canvassing Albert Finney, Olivier tried to interest Richard Burton in taking over the National Theatre after his imminent retirement from the post. Burton declined, seeing the great Olivier forced out of his beloved theater that he had built over two decades and for which he had become the first actor peer. The Society of London Theatre renamed The Society of West End Theatre Awards, which had been launched in 1976, "The Laurence Olivier Awards" in his honor in 1984. The annual awards are considered the most prestigious in the London theater world. 1958: Was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actor (Dramatic) for "The Entertainer," a role he recreated in an Oscar-nominated performance in the film version of the same name, The Entertainer (1960). This was his only nomination for a Tony, an award he never won. Modelled the accent for his character of George Hurstwood, an American living in turn-of-the-last-century Chicago in Carrie (1952), on Spencer Tracy. Was named the #14 greatest actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list by the American Film Institute. Is portrayed by Andrew Clarke in Blonde (2001) (TV), by Anthony Higgins in Darlings of the Gods (1989) (TV) and by Anthony Gordon in Marilyn: The Untold Story (1980) (TV). Won three Best Actor Awards from the New York Film Critics Circle: as the eponymous protagonists of Shakespeare's The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (1944) and Hamlet (1948), and as the mystery writer in Sleuth (1972). Luchino Visconti wanted to cast him in the title role of the Italian prince in Il gattopardo (1963), but his producer overruled him. The producer insisted on a box-office star to justify the lavish production's high budget and essentially forced Visconti to accept Burt Lancaster. A decade later, the two Oscar-winning actors competed again for the role of another Italian prince, Mafia chieftain Don Corleone, in The Godfather (1972), ultimately losing out to Marlon Brando, Oliver's only rival for the title of world's greatest actor. Was the first thespian nominated for an acting Oscar in five different decades, from the 1930s through the 1970s, inclusive. Only Katharine Hepburn (1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1980s), Paul Newman (1950s, 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, and 200s) and Jack Nicholson (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s) equaled this feat. In contrast, Bette Davis' ten nominations and Spencer Tracy's eight were spread over four decades (1930s through 1960s, inclusive) while Marlon Brando's eight nominations were bunched into three decades (1950s, 1970s, 1980s). 2006: His performance as Richard III in Richard III (1955) is ranked #39 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. 4/21/58: According to "Time Magazine," as an addendum to its cover story on Alec Guinness, in 1957 Olivier turned down a Hollywood offer of $250,000 for one motion picture. Instead of making the movie and pocketing the cash (worth approximately $1.7 million in 2005 terms), Olivier preferred to take on the role of Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer (1960) (a role written specifically for him) at the princely sum of £45 per week (worth $126 in 1957 dollars at the contemporaneous exchange rate, or $856 in 2005 terms). He wrote in his autobiography, "Confessions of an Actor," that sometime after World War II, his wife Vivien Leigh announced calmly that she was no longer in love with him, but loved him like a brother. Olivier was emotionally devastated. What he did not know at the time was that Leigh's declaration--and her subsequent affairs with multiple partners--was a signal of the bipolar disorder that eventually disrupted her life and career. Leigh had every intention of remaining married to Olivier, but was no longer interested in him romantically. Olivier himself began having affairs (including one with Claire Bloom in the 1950s, according to Bloom's own autobiography) as Leigh's attentions wandered and roamed outside of the marital bedchamber. Olivier had to accompany her to Hollywood in 1950 in order to keep an eye on her and keep her out of trouble, to ensure that her manic-depression did not get out of hand and disrupt the production of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). In order to do so, he accepted a part in William Wyler's Carrie (1952), which was shot at the same time as "Streetcar". The Oliviers were popular with Hollywood's elite, and Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando both liked "Larry" very much (that was the reason that Brando gave in his own autobiography for not sleeping with Leigh, whom he thought had a superior posterior: he couldn't raid Olivier's "chicken coop," as "Larry was such a nice guy.") None of them knew the depths of the anguish he was enduring as the caretaker of his mentally ill wife. Brando said that Leigh was superior to Jessica Tandy--the original stage Blanche DuBois--as she WAS Blanche. Olivier himself had directed Leigh in the part on the London stage. Alec Guinness played The Fool to his first Lear under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie in 1938 when he was 24 and Olivier was 31. Olivier was generally considered less than successful in the part due to his youth and relative lack of maturity in classical parts (though his contemporaneous Henry V was a smash and hinted at his future greatness as an interpreter of William Shakespeare). Guinness, however, received raves for his acting. Both actors would go on to knighthoods and Best Actor Oscars in their long and distinguished careers. Following a bad fall in March 1989, Olivier endured his final operation, a hip replacement. His sister Sybille died the following month at the age of 87. By early July his one remaining kidney was in a precarious state, and he was given a maximum of six weeks left to live. At the time of his death, at 11:15 a.m. on July 11, 1989, he had been ill for the last 22 years of his life. 6/67: Underwent hyperbaric radiation treatment for prostate cancer at St. Thomas' Hospital, London. On July 7 he discharged himself from the hospital, where he had been confined to bed with pneumonia as a complication of the cancer treatment, after Vivien Leigh died. In the following year he had his appendix removed. 5/83: He flew to New York to receive an award at the Lincoln Center, where Douglas Fairbanks Jr. described him as "one hell of an actor." The next evening, Olivier and Joan Plowright went to Washington where, after a showing of King Lear (1983) (TV), President Ronald Reagan gave a small dinner party for them at the White House. In the summer of that year Olivier again suffered from pleurisy, and stayed in St. Thomas's Hospital for three weeks for the removal of a kidney. Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck said that Olivier's 1964 turn as Othello at the National Theatre in London was the greatest performance he had ever seen. Though Olivier received an Oscar nomination in 1966 for his performance in the film version of the National Theatre production, many critics said that the performance captured on film was merely a shadow of what they had seen on stage. Other critics trashed the performance as rubbish, both on-stage and screen, accusing Olivier of making the noble Moor (Moors are considered Caucasian, that is, white under European classification systems developed in the 19th century) into a racist caricature akin to "Old Black Joe." For his part, Olivier had wanted to give Othello "Negritude" (Sammy Davis Jr. claimed that Olivier had come to see him perform multiple times and copied some of his mannerisms in his Othello) in order to comment on racism. He wanted the audience to dislike Othello until the very end, when he is destroyed by the tragedy Iago has hatched for him. Then, the audience would be complicit in Othello's destruction (as they had despised Othello too as a "negro" rather than as the white man in black face he had always been portrayed as by British actors), and their guilt at the destroyed innocent (and their shame over their own racism) would bring them to the point of catharsis. Olivier described it as pushing the audience away for most of the play before drawing them back into his palm. Offered parts in "Coronation Street" (1960) and "Doctor Who" (1963). Actor William Redfield, a friend of Marlon Brando who played Guildenstern in the 1964 Richard Burton Hamlet (1964/I) directed by John Gielgud, writes in his 1967 memoir of the production "Letters from an Actor" that Brando had been considered the Great White Hope of his generation of American actors. That is, they believed that Brando's more naturalistic style, combined with his greatness as an actor, would prove a challenge to the more stylized and technical English acting paradigm epitomized by Olvier, Brando's rival as the world's greatest actor. Redfield would tell Burton stories of Brando, whom he had not yet met. Refield sadly confessed that Brando, by not taking on roles such as Hamlet, had failed to help American actors create an acting tradition that would rival the English. He was asked by the the Ministry of Information to play the French-Canadian trapper Johnny in 49th Parallel (1941), a film commissioned by the Ministry to raise awareness of the Nazi threat in North America, particularly the U.S. However, it was intended for Canadian consumption also, as many French-Canadians did not want to be at war with Germany and did not want to fight. Vichy France was an ally of Nazi Germany, and many French-Canadians in Quebec were pro-German. That's the reason Olivier, the biggest star in the film, was asked to play a French-Canadian who tells the Nazi officer he is a "Canadian" and not "French". It was felt Oliver would intensify the film's value as pro-British propaganda in Quebec ("Olivier", of course, is a French surname; his ancestors were Hugenots). When Canada resorted to conscription to swell the ranks of its army, there were draft riots throughout Quebec, so intense was the feeling against the United Kingdom, which of course had subjugated New France less than 200 years before. Anti-war sentiment was so rife throughout Canada that Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King declared that only volunteers would be shipped off to Europe. When Olivier first arrived in Hollywood in 1932, his height was measured at exactly five feet ten inches and his weight at 145 lbs. Truman Capote pronounced his last name "Oliver". He was originally cast in Burt Lancaster's role in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). The son of a high church Anglican, Olivier was a lifelong Conservative. In 1983 he wrote to congratulate Margaret Thatcher following her victory in that year's General Election. He declined the offer of a peerage from Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1967, despite Wilson's insistence that it was not a political honour, but later accepted a peerage from Edward Heath's Conservative government in the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 1970. Attended St. Edward's School, Oxford, a top British Boarding school. Addressed President John F. Kennedy's inauguration on 20 January 1961. Following the election of a new Labour government in the mid 1970s, Olivier found his tax rate almost doubled. Michael Caine advised him to to leave England, but Olivier was unwilling to do so. Caine then suggested he do every job offered to him - so Olivier appeared in many projects he otherwise would have passed on. Was in consideration for the role of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons (1966) but Paul Scofield, who went on to win a Best Actor Oscar for his performance, was cast instead.