Date of Birth
22 May 1907,
Dorking, Surrey, England, UK
11 July 1989, Steyning,
West Sussex,
England,
UK (complications from a muscle disorder)
Laurence
Kerr Olivier
Nickname
Larry Kim (childhood family nickname)
Height
5' 10" (1.78 m)
Mini Biography
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 (1952) 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 (1960).
s
show writer
Buz Kohan, after receiving his honorary Oscar]
God, I mucked that up. I had no idea what I was saying but I didn't want to stop.
[upon being awarded his second honorary Academy Award in 1979, an Oscar statuette for Lifetime Achievement, "for the full body of his work, for the unique achievements of his entire career and his lifetime of contribution to the art of film," presented by Cary Grant] Oh, dear friends, am I supposed to speak after that? Cary, my dear old friend for many a year - from the earliest years of either of us working in this country - thank you for that beautiful citation and the trouble you have taken to make it and for all the warm generosities in it. Mr. President and governors of the Academy, committee members, fellows, my very noble and approved good masters, my colleagues, my friends, my fellow students. In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation's generosities, this particular choice May be found by future generations to be a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it - the prodigal, pure, human kindness of it - must be seen as a beautiful star in the firmament which shines upon me at this moment, dazzling me a little, but filling me with warmth and the extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow. From the top of this moment, in the solace, in the kindly emotion that it is changing my soul and my heart at this moment, I thank you for this great gift which lends me such a very splendid part in this, your glorious occasion. Thank you.
[1989] time I was gone. Time I was dead.
[on ex-wife Vivien Leigh] We were like brother and sister, just as she always wanted. But fortunately, occasional incest was allowed.
I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.
[on Spencer Tracy] I've learned more about acting from watching Tracy than in any other way.
[on Marilyn Monroe] There were two entirely unrelated sides to Marilyn. You would not be far out if you described her as schizoid; the two people that she was could hardly have been more different. She was so adorable, so witty, such incredible fun and more physically attractive than anyone I could have imagined, apart from herself on the screen.
[on Vivien Leigh] Parts seem to haunt more actresses than actors. Poor darling Vivien was very much haunted. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) didn't do her any good at all.
[on Vivien Leigh] Apart from her looks, which were magical, she possessed beautiful poise; her neck looked almost too fragile to support her head and bore with it a sense of surprise, and something of the pride of the master juggler who can make a brilliant maneuver appear almost accidental. She also had something else: an attraction of the most perturbing nature I had ever encountered.
[on actress Ann Harding] The pretty and highly regarded Ann Harding, a woman of great charm, integrity and beauty.
[on Charles Laughton] The only actor of genius I've ever met.
[on Alec Guinness] He's an actor, that fellow, a superb actor. But over and above that he does his homework. However idiosyncratically I saw Alec playing a part, I would be very, very cautious about criticizing it, because I know that every point about it would be backed by a complete marshaling of all available evidence. He really does his homework.
[on Michael Caine] Wonderfully good company, ceaselessly funny and a brilliant actor.
[on Marilyn Monroe] A professional amateur.
Salary
| 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) |
|
