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Laurence OlivierAdd to My CelebsAge 82 (passed away Jul. 11th, 1989) Birthday May. 22nd, 1907 Born in Dorking, Surrey, England, UK Height 5' 10 |
Laurence Olivier's Main TV Roles
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Main Movie Roles2004 - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow2000 - The Filth and the Fury 1989 - War Requiem 1985 - Wild Geese II 1984 - Terror in the Aisles 1984 - The Bounty 1981 - Clash of the Titans 1980 - The Jazz Singer 1979 - Dracula 1979 - A Little Romance 1978 - The Boys From Brazil 1977 - A Bridge Too Far 1976 - Marathon Man 1976 - The Seven-Per-Cent Solution 1972 - Sleuth 1971 - Nicholas and Alexandra 1969 - Battle of Britain 1966 - Khartoum 1965 - Bunny Lake Is Missing 1960 - The Entertainer 1960 - Spartacus 1957 - The Prince And The Showgirl 1955 - Richard III 1952 - Carrie 1948 - Hamlet 1944 - The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France 1941 - That Hamilton Woman 1940 - 21 Days 1940 - Rebecca 1940 - Pride and Prejudice 1939 - Wuthering Heights 1938 - The Divorce of Lady X 1937 - Fire Over England 1936 - As You Like It |
NOTE: Complete List of Works can be found at IMDB
He could speak William Shakespeare (I)'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 (I), 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 also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).
TRIVIA:
- 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.
- 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)_ (qv) and _Hamlet (1948)_ (qv), and as the mystery writer in _Sleuth (1972)_ (qv).
- His father, a clergyman, decided Laurence would become an actor.
- 1970: He became the first actor made a peer of the realm (the only others subsequently being 'Bernard Miles' (qv) in 1979 and 'Richard Attenborough' (qv) in 1993) when 'Harold Wilson (V)' (qv)'s second Labour government secured him a life peerage to represent the interests of the theater in the House of Lords. He was elevated to the peerage as Baron Olivier of Brighton in 1970.
- 'Truman Capote' (qv) pronounced his last name "Oliver.".
- 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.
- He is considered by many people to be the greatest English-speaking actor of the twentieth century, even more so than 'Marlon Brando' (qv) and 'Spencer Tracy' (qv).
- When he went to Hollywood in the early 1930s, studio executives wanted him to change his name to "Larry Oliver." He said that later on in his highly successful career, he would muse with his friends about what might have become of him, what kind of career he would have had, if he had changed his name to "Larry Oliver," as that name connoted a different type of actor. Actually, there was an American actor with that name who appeared six times on Broadway between 1930 and 1965, most notably in 'Garson Kanin' (qv)'s "Born Yesterday." The "real" 'Larry Oliver (I)' (qv) repeated his Broadway performance as the politician Norval Hedges in the 1950 movie version of the play, (_Born Yesterday (1950)_ (qv)), his only film appearance (a senator on Broadway, Larry Oliver's character had been demoted to a Congressman for the film, but he was again bumped up to the Senate in the 1956 "Hallmark Hall of Fame" teleplay).
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