Sir Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier
1907 - 1989 (complications from a muscle disorder)
British born Dorking

Nickname Larry, Kim (childhood family nickname) . Height 5' 10" (1.78 m) . 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 (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941). 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 (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). 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 (1960), 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". Spouse Joan Plowright (17 March 1961 - 11 July 1989) (his death) 3 children, Vivien Leigh (31 August 1940 - 2 December 1960) (divorced), Jill Esmond (25 July 1930 - 29 January 1940) (divorced) 1 son.

War Requiem (1989) , "Lost Empires" (1986) , "Peter the Great" (1986) , Wild Geese II (1985) , "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1984) , The Bounty (1984) , A Talent for Murder (1984) , The Ebony Tower (1984) , "Wagner" (1983) , Mr. Halpern and Mr. Johnson (1983) , King Lear (1983) , The Jigsaw Man (1983), Inchon (1982) , A Voyage Round My Father (1982) , "Brideshead Revisited" (1981) , Clash of the Titans (1981) , The Jazz Singer (1980) , Dracula (1979) , A Little Romance (1979) , The Boys from Brazil (1978) , The Betsy (1978) , Daphne Laureola (1978) , Saturday, Sunday, Monday (1978) , Come Back, Little Sheba (1977), A Bridge Too Far (1977) , "Jesus of Nazareth" (1977), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976) , The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) , Marathon Man (1976) , The Collection (1976) , Love Among the Ruins (1975) , "The World at War" (1974) , The Rehearsal (1974) , "The Morecambe & Wise Show" (1973) , Long Day's Journey Into Night (1973) , The Merchant of Venice (1973) , Sleuth (1972) , Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) , Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) , Three Sisters (1970) , David Copperfield (1969) , Battle of Britain (1969) , The Dance of Death (1969), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) , Male of the Species (1969) , The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968/I) , Romeo and Juliet (1968/I) , Khartoum (1966) , Othello (1965) , Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) , Uncle Vanya (1963) , Term of Trial (1962) , The Power and the Glory (1961) , Spartacus (1960) , The Entertainer (1960) , The Moon and Sixpence (1959) , The Devil's Disciple (1959) , John Gabriel Borkman (1958) ,The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) , Richard III (1955) , The Beggar's Opera (1953) , Carrie (1952) , The Magic Box (1951) , Hamlet (1948) , The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (1944) , This Happy Breed (1944) , The Demi-Paradise (1943) , 49th Parallel (1941) , That Hamilton Woman (1941) , Pride and Prejudice (1940) , Conquest of the Air (1940) , Rebecca (1940) , 21 Days (1940) , Wuthering Heights (1939) , Q Planes (1939) , The Divorce of Lady X (1938) , Fire Over England (1937) , As You Like It (1936) , Moscow Nights (1935) , Perfect Understanding (1933) , No Funny Business (1933) , Westward Passage (1932) , The Yellow Ticket (1931) , Friends and Lovers (1931) , Potiphar's Wife (1931) , The Temporary Widow (1930) , Too Many Crooks (1930)