Confessions of an Actor: Laurence Olivier Autobiography
(An autobiography by the English actor discusses his theat...)
An autobiography by the English actor discusses his theatrical and film career and offers a candid account of his personal life, focusing on his relationship with actress Vivien Leigh.
(A comedy of manners in which Gloria Swanson and Laurence ...)
A comedy of manners in which Gloria Swanson and Laurence Olivier marry on the condition that each will retain his or her individual sexual freedom. But when each flaunts extra-marital escapades, an amusing battle of the sexes ensues.
(Fogbound in a hotel, Leslie Steele tricks handsom divorce...)
Fogbound in a hotel, Leslie Steele tricks handsom divorce lawyer Everard Logan into sharing his suite. She lets him think she's married; next day Lord Mere, whose thrice- divorced wife spent the night with a man in the same hotel, comes to Logan for a divorce. Leslie delightedly teases Logan with her imaginary scandalous past. Then she joins forces with the real Lady Mere...
(Set on the murky, isolated moors in Pre-Victorian England...)
Set on the murky, isolated moors in Pre-Victorian England, this adaptation of Emily Bronte's classic novel tells the story of a doomed love between a young, aristocratic woman and the young man who works in her father's stables.
(Olivier mustered out of the navy to film this adaptation ...)
Olivier mustered out of the navy to film this adaptation of Shakespeare's history. Embroiled in World War II, Britons took courage from this tale of a king who surmounts overwhelming odds and emerges victorious. This sumptuous Technicolor rendering features a thrilling re-creation of the battle of Agincourt, and Sir Laurence in his prime as director and actor.
(Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best picture and...)
Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best picture and Best Actor, Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet continues to be the most compelling version of Shakespeare's beloved tragedy.
(As Carrie, the smalltown girl come to Chicago, Jennifer J...)
As Carrie, the smalltown girl come to Chicago, Jennifer Jones "seems to have stepped out of the pages of the book". And Laurence Olivier gives one of his finest portrayals as love-doomed Hurstwood.
(With Richard III, Laurence Olivier, as director, producer...)
With Richard III, Laurence Olivier, as director, producer, and star, transfigures Shakespeare's great historical drama into a mesmerizing vision of Machiavellian villainy.
(Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier whip up a romantic so...)
Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier whip up a romantic souffle aslovers, contending politics, petty jealousies and palace intrigues inwar-shadowed Europe.
Stanley Kubrick directs Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and Jean Simmons in this Academy Award-winning classic story of a bold gladiator slave who takes on Imperial Rome.
(Laurence Olivier and Sarah Miles portray teacher and stud...)
Laurence Olivier and Sarah Miles portray teacher and student in Glenville;s provocative movie notable in its time for its frank sexual theme and notable in ours for Olivier;s authoritative portrait of an unauthoritative man, one too good, or too fearful, to misuse another human being.
(Stuart Burge's film of John Dexter's production of Othell...)
Stuart Burge's film of John Dexter's production of Othello at the National Theatre was made in Shakespeare's Quarter-Centenary year and stands today as a masterpiece among film presentations of theatre productions.
(A movie about the First World War based on a stage musica...)
A movie about the First World War based on a stage musical of the same name, portraying the "Game of War" and focusing mainly on the members of one family (last name Smith) who go off to war.
(The legendary novel by Charles Dickens comes to life in t...)
The legendary novel by Charles Dickens comes to life in this colorful interpretation directed by Delbert Mann and includes two of the authors most memorable characters: the villainous and cunning Uriah Heep and Mr. Micawber, young David's penniless but amiable friend.
(Directed by Oscar winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About ...)
Directed by Oscar winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve), adapted from Anthony Shaffer's (The Wicker Man) award-winning stage play and nominated for four Oscars, it is an intelligent thriller with a twist in the tail that you'll never see coming.
(Dustin Hoffman plays the likeable graduate student and ma...)
Dustin Hoffman plays the likeable graduate student and marathon runner of the title, unwillingly trapped in a killing game of intrigue involving a Nazi fugitive, Christian Szell.
(Alive and hiding in South America, he fiendish Nazi Dr. J...)
Alive and hiding in South America, he fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project – he wants to clone Hitler.
(Sir Laurence Olivier is an enchanting old rogue who teams...)
Sir Laurence Olivier is an enchanting old rogue who teams up with a pair of charming and irresistible young lovers in a love story/comedy for romantics young and old.
(Starring Laurence Olivier, this humorous, heartwarming dr...)
Starring Laurence Olivier, this humorous, heartwarming drama from the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey portrays the difficult but enduring love between father and son.
(Set on the eve of World War I, it unfolds against the bac...)
Set on the eve of World War I, it unfolds against the backdrop of the coming conflict in Europe, and the growing sense that the world is about to change forever.
(The world's foremost actor, Laurence Olivier, and one of ...)
The world's foremost actor, Laurence Olivier, and one of America's greatest playwrights, Eugene O'Neill, are brought together in this acclaimed stage production, by the National Theatre Company, of O'Neill's masterpiece.
Laurence Kerr Olivier was a British actor, director, and producer. One of the most outstanding figures of the 20th century, he demonstrated his incredible talent not only through the hundreds of roles on the stage and screen, including the brilliantly filmed adaptations of Shakespeare, but also as a figure instrumental in the development of the Royal National Theatre.
Background
Laurence Olivier was born on May 22, 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, United Kingdom into a family of the Reverend Gerard Kerr Olivier and Agnes Louise Olivier (maiden name Crookenden). The youngest child, Olivier had a sister Sybille and a brother Gerard Dacres.
Education
Laurence Olivier's father Gerard Kerr Olivier, an issue of a long dynasty of Protestant clergymen, was initially trained as an educator. By the age of thirty, he had turned back to the family tradition and became a priest of the Anglican Church.
An adherent of high church and ritualistic Anglicanism, Gerard usually received only temporary church positions that pushed him to constantly move from one place to another. It disturbed little Olivier who was more attached to his mother to develop firm friendships.
Despite austerity and certain remoteness, it was the father who insisted on Laurence's career as an actor perhaps because of his own youthful intention to the stage. Laurence Olivier was turned onto arts since his early years, and learned a lot about the art of performing looking at his father who realized his stage ambitions while preaching.
After attending a number of preparatory schools, in 1916, Olivier was admitted to All Saints, Margaret Street Church Choir School in London. A year after the admission, he made his stage debut as Brutus in a condensed version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. His performance made a great impression on the spectators, including Lady Tree, Sybil Thorndike, and Ellen Terry. The role of Maria in Twelfth Night followed.
In 1920, Laurence Olivier entered St Edward's School, Oxford studying there for the next four years. His participation in the school's productions included the female leading part, Katharina, in The Taming of the Shrew and Puck (Robin Goodfellow) in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The first one was also shown at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The positive reviews that Olivier received from the theatrical big names of the time firmed his intention to regard acting as his future profession.
In 1924, Olivier obtained the bursary at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art (currently the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London). One of his fellows at the school was Peggy Ashcroft. He left the school the next year.
Laurence Olivier had four honorary doctorates, from Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Oxford, and the University of Edinburgh.
Laurence Olivier's long path as an actor began from Shakespearean and other classical roles during his training and within the small touring theatre companies. While still studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, during the vacations of 1925, he tried his hand as a stand-in actor and assistant stage manager at the St Christopher School Theatre, Letchworth.
At the end of that same year, after leaving the studies at the Central, Olivier, with the help of Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson, was given the same posts at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square. Following Thorndike's advice, the young actor joined the Birmingham Repertory company (currently the Birmingham Repertory Theatre) in 1926.
The couple of years that Olivier spent in the company provided him with good experience with such parts as Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer, leading role in Uncle Vanya, and Parolles in All's Well That Ends Well. One of Olivier's peers in the company, Ralph Richardson, became his lifelong friend. In 1929, Laurence Olivier accepted the title role in a staging of P.C. Wren's Beau Geste. That same year, he debuted on Broadway playing in Murder on the Second Floor.
Olivier made his debut in a movie the following year turning in Too Many Crooks, and then in a crime comedy The Temporary Widow. The role of Victor Prynne in Noël Coward's play Private Lives staged in autumn at the new Phoenix Theatre, London provided young Olivier with first commercial success. The first appearances in several Hollywood movies possible due the contract with RKO Pictures, including Friends and Lovers, The Yellow Ticket, and Westward Passage didn't bring him the fame he expected. The leading role in a 1933 Queen Christina that Olivier was supposed to play alongside Greta Garbo was given to the actress's ex-partner John Gilbert.
Upon his return to the United Kingdom, Olivier concentrated on classical stage roles, including Queen of Scots, Theatre Royal and major Shakespearean characters, for example, Romeo and Mercutio with John Gielgud at the 1935 New Theatre (currently the Noël Coward Theatre) production. The performances were warmly met both by spectators and theatre critics.
The next year was marked for Olivier by another Shakespearean character, Orlando, this time played in the Paul Czinner's movie interpretation of the eponymous play. Although it wasn't a success, Olivier later collaborated with the fellow actors and the picture's composer William Walton on his subsequent productions based on Shakespeare's works. Olivier's roles in Hamlet, Henry V, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night played within the Old Vic Company since 1937 finally secured his status as a great stage actor and an authority in Shakespearean art. The next storm of Hollywood turned out a success as well. Olivier's Heathcliff from 1939 Samuel Goldwyn's Wuthering Heights was also a global success.
Olivier appeared in three movies, Rebecca (second Oscar nomination), Pride and Prejudice, and That Hamilton Woman before joining the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm in 1941. During his military service, mainly in entertainment capacity, he acted in two British war movies. Henry V on which Olivier worked as director, producer, and actor provided him with the Academy Honorary Award.
After the discharge in 1944, Laurence Olivier became one of the directors of the Old Vic company, along with John Burell and Ralph Richardson who laid a course for the revitalization of the theatre. Staying with the triumvirate till its dismission in 1948, Olivier played a number of remarkable roles, including Arms and the Man (1944), Uncle Vanya (1945), and the double bill Oedipus Rex and The Critic. The actor enlarged the collection of his Shakespearean roles by the leading parts in Richard III and King Lear, the latter also directed by him.
The roles in three additional movie interpretations of Shakespearean works followed, black and white Hamlet (1948), an Academy Awards winner for the best picture and best actor, Richard III (1954), both under his direction, and a 1965 Othello by Stuart Burge. He joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre for its 1954 and 1955 seasons playing in such stagings as The Sleeping Prince, Macbeth, and Titus Andronicus. He was admitted to the role of the music hall comedian Archie Rice in John Osborne's new play The Entertainer in 1957 appearing in the same part in its movie version two years later.
In 1962 Laurence Olivier became the first director of the Royal National Theatre serving in that capacity till 1973. During the first three seasons of the National, he combined the duties with the directorship of the Chichester Festival Theatre. Uncle Vanya directed by himself and starring him and his third wife Joan Plowright was a great success of the company's opening season in 1962.
From the eight directorial projects that he made as head of the National, Chekhov's The Three Sisters of 1968 became one of the most important. Its movie version followed in 1970. In total, Olivier appeared in thirteen productions of the National during his tenure, including Love for Love, the Merchant of Venice, A Long Day's Journey into Night, and others.
To provide the National with financial support, Oliver accepted almost all film roles, even the most ordinary ones, like the American TV advertisements for Polaroid cameras. Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi and Anthony Hopkins were among those who approved themselves along Oliver's directorship.
Although the actor struggled against a range of diseases for about the last fifteen years of his life, Laurence Olivier turned in a significant number of pictures during this time, including the major ones like Sleuth, Marathon Man, Love Among the Ruins and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof TV films, and British miniseries Brideshead Revisited. The leading role of King Lear that he performed for Granada Television in 1983 and the cameo in 1989 Derek Jarman's War Requiem became his last appearances on the screen.
(TV programme by Michael Elliott based on the eponymous Wi...)
1983
Views
Laurence Olivier often adhered to the manner of Gerald du Maurier in his early stage performings. At the beginning of his career, the actor didn't like much to play in movies which he characterized as "this anaemic little medium which could not stand great acting."
Quotations:
"Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it."
"Acting is an everlasting search for truth."
"Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult."
"The art of persuasion. The actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience."
"I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor – to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself."
"What is the main problem of the actor? It is to keep the audience awake, and not let them go to sleep, then wake up and go home feeling they've wasted their money."
"Don't be afraid to be outrageous; the critics will shoot you down anyway."
"The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass."
"We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses."
"Art is a little bit larger than life – it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness."
"Life is enthusiasm, zest."
"Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word."
"Striving for perfection is the greatest stopper there is. You'll be afraid you can't achieve it. It's your excuse to yourself for not doing anything. Instead, strive for excellence, doing your best."
"I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman."
"I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it."
"Have a very good reason for everything you do."
Membership
Laurence Olivier was a member of the Green Room Club, the Garrik Club, and the Marylebone Cricket Club.
Personality
For several years from the middle of the 1960s, Laurence Olivier suffered from stage fright probably caused by the combination of the director's duties at the Royal National Theatre with the simultaneous obligation to play several challenging roles, like Othello.
The multiple honors and titles of Olivier didn't disturb him to keep his essential modesty. He preferred the simple compellation Larry to the pathetic of Sir Laurence or Lord Olivier.
Physical Characteristics:
At the end of his life, Laurence Olivier struggled against such illnesses as cancer, pneumonia, thrombosis, dermatomyositis, and a degenerative muscle disorder.
Quotes from others about the person
"Olivier's one great fault was a paranoid jealousy of anyone who he thought was a rival." - Robert Stephens, actor
"[Olivier] elevated the art of acting in the twentieth century ... principally by the overwhelming force of his example. Like Garrick, Kean, and Irving before him, he lent glamour and excitement to acting so that, in any theatre in the world, an Olivier night raised the level of expectation and sent spectators out into the darkness a little more aware of themselves and having experienced a transcendent touch of ecstasy. That, in the end, was the true measure of his greatness." - Michael Billington, actor's biographer
Interests
Sport & Clubs
cricket
Connections
Laurence Olivier was married three times.
The actress Jill Esmond became his first wife on July 25, 1930. The family produced a son named Tarquin. He became an actor and movie producer. Later, both Esmond and Olivier recognized that the union was a mistake.
In 1936, while working in Old Vic company productions, Olivier got acquainted with Vivien Leigh with whom he soon fell in love. According to the biographer Michael Munn, Olivier had one more amour with another actress Ann Todd at the same time and probably a short affair with an actor Henry Ainley.
Leigh and Olivier opened up their romance and broke up with their then spouses in 1937. Olivier and Esmond divorced three years later, in January. The following month, Leigh dissolved a marriage with Leigh Holman. The wedding ceremony of Olivier and Leigh took place in August 1940 at the Sab Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara.
In 1948, Leigh and Olivier, the latter as one of the members of the Old Vic directors board, went on a company's tour around Australia and New Zealand. It was during this six-month tour that the couple met an Australian actor Peter Finch with whom Vivien developed a love affair. The relationship lasted intermittently for a few years.
Vivien Leigh demonstrated the first signs of mental disorder in the early 1950s. In 1953, she put Olivier wise of her love affair with Finch. Her illness that manifested in on-and-off depressions and nervous breakdowns led to certain problems in the union with Olivier, and by the end of the decade the marriage began to show signs of strain although the spouses continued to take part in several projects together.
Olivier and Leigh divorced in December 1960. A year later, in March, Laurence formed a family with Joan Plowright. The marriage lasted till the end of his life. The family produced three children, Richard, Tamsin Agnes Margaret, and Julianne Rose Kate.
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