Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, was an English actor and director known for his powerful performances on stage and screen. Along with fellow actors John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave, and Ralph Richardson, he was one of the leading figures in British theater during the mid-20th century. Olivier began his career in the late 1920s and quickly became a star, performing in many famous plays and films.

He played many important roles, including Shakespeare’s characters Richard III and Othello, and also directed several of Shakespeare’s plays. Olivier’s film career included over fifty roles, such as in Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and three Shakespeare films he both acted in and directed: Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III. He also appeared in popular films like Spartacus and Sleuth.

Olivier received many awards for his work, including a knighthood, a life peerage, an Academy Award, and several other top honors. The National Theatre’s main auditorium is named after him, and the Laurence Olivier Awards, given each year by the Society of London Theatre, also carry his name. He was married three times and had four children.

Life and career

See also: Laurence Olivier on stage and screen

1907–1924: Early life and education

Laurence Kerr Olivier was born on 22 May 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest of three children of Reverend Gerard Kerr Olivier and Agnes Louise Crookenden. He had two older siblings: Sybille and Gerard Dacres "Dickie." His family came from a long line of Protestant clergymen. Olivier's father was a priest of the Church of England, known for his dramatic preaching style.

In 1912, Olivier's father became assistant rector at St Saviour's, Pimlico. Olivier attended the choir school of All Saints, Margaret Street in London, where he performed in school plays. From there, he went to St Edward's School, Oxford from 1921 to 1924. In his final year, he played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream and decided to pursue acting.

1924–1929: Early acting career

In 1924, Olivier joined the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art on a scholarship. After graduating in 1925, he worked with small theatrical companies. His first stage appearance was in a sketch called The Unfailing Instinct at the Brighton Hippodrome in August 1925. He later joined Sybil Thorndike and her husband Lewis Casson's London company.

In 1926, Olivier joined the Birmingham Repertory Company, where he played many important roles. In 1928, he began a relationship with actress Jill Esmond. That same year, he created the role of Stanhope in Journey's End, achieving great success.

1930–1935: Rising star

In 1930, Olivier earned extra money with small film roles. He married Esmond in July 1930, but their marriage was unhappy. In 1930, Noël Coward cast Olivier in his new play Private Lives, giving him his first successful West End role.

In 1931, Olivier moved to Hollywood under a two-film contract with RKO Pictures. His first film was Friends and Lovers, followed by The Yellow Ticket. Disillusioned with Hollywood, he returned to London. In 1933, he appeared opposite Greta Garbo in Queen Christina, but was replaced after two weeks of filming.

1936–1938: Old Vic and Vivien Leigh

In 1936, Olivier joined the Old Vic company. In January 1937, he took the title role in an uncut version of Hamlet. Later that year, he began an affair with actress Vivien Leigh. In 1937, the Old Vic company performed Hamlet in the courtyard of Elsinore castle in Denmark.

1938–1944: Hollywood and war years

In 1938, Olivier traveled to Hollywood to film Wuthering Heights, alongside Merle Oberon and David Niven. The film was a success and earned him his first Academy Award nomination.

After returning to London briefly in mid-1939, Olivier and Leigh returned to America. Olivier prepared for filming Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. He received his second Academy Award nomination for Rebecca. Olivier followed Rebecca with Pride and Prejudice, in the role of Mr. Darcy.

In January 1940, Olivier and Esmond were granted their divorce. In February, Leigh's husband also applied for their marriage to be terminated. Olivier and Leigh married in August 1940.

1944–1948: Co-directing the Old Vic

In 1944, with the war turning, Tyrone Guthrie invited Olivier and Ralph Richardson to head the Old Vic company. The triumvirate secured the New Theatre for their first season and recruited a company. They opened with a repertory of four plays: Peer Gynt, Arms and the Man, Richard III and Uncle Vanya.

In 1945, the company toured Germany and appeared at the Comédie-Française theatre in Paris.

In 1946–47, the triumvirate's final London season featured Olivier in the role of King Lear. In 1947, Olivier began working on his second film as a director, Hamlet (1948), in which he also took the lead role. The film became a critical and commercial success in Britain and abroad. Hamlet became the first non-American film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Olivier won Best Actor.

1948–1951: Post-war work

By the end of the Australian tour, both Leigh and Olivier were exhausted and ill. In 1949, Olivier staged the English premiere of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, with Leigh in the central role of Blanche DuBois. The play was condemned by most critics but was a considerable commercial success.

In 1950, Olivier produced, directed, and starred in Christopher Fry's verse play Venus Observed. After a series of box-office failures, the company balanced its books in 1951 with productions of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

1951–1954: Independent work

In 1951, Olivier joined Leigh in Hollywood to film Carrie, based on the novel Sister Carrie. Although the film was troubled, Olivier received warm reviews. Olivier began to notice changes in Leigh's behavior due to her illness.

In 1953, Leigh traveled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to film Elephant Walk with Peter Finch. Shortly after filming started, she suffered a breakdown and returned to Britain.

For the Coronation season of 1953, Olivier and Leigh starred in the West End in Terence Rattigan's comedy, The Sleeping Prince. It ran for eight months but was widely regarded as a minor contribution to the season.

In 1954, Olivier directed his third Shakespeare film, Richard III (1955), which he co-produced with Alexander Korda.

1955–1956: Last productions with Leigh

In 1955, Olivier and Leigh played leading roles in three plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford. They began with Twelfth Night, directed by John Gielgud, with Olivier as Malvolio and Leigh as Viola.

The next production was Macbeth. Olivier's performance in the title role attracted superlatives. Leigh's Lady Macbeth received mixed but generally polite notices.

In their third production of the 1955 Stratford season, Olivier played the title role in Titus Andronicus, with Leigh as Lavinia. Her notices in the part were damning, but the production by Peter Brook and Olivier's performance as Titus received the greatest ovation in Stratford history from the first-night audience.

1957–1963: Royal Court and Chichester

During the production of The Prince and the Showgirl, Olivier saw the English Stage Company's production of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court. In 1957, he asked to be cast in Osborne's new play, The Entertainer, an allegory of Britain's post-colonial decline.

In 1957, Olivier began a relationship with actress Joan Plowright, which lasted for the rest of his life. Olivier said that playing Archie "made me feel like a modern actor again."

In 1961, Olivier accepted the directorship of the Chichester Festival. In 1962, for the opening season he directed two neglected 17th-century English plays, John Fletcher's The Chances and John Ford's The Broken Heart, followed by Uncle Vanya. The company he recruited was forty strong and included Sybil Thorndike, Lewis Casson, Michael Redgrave, Athene Seyler, John Neville and Plowright.

National Theatre

1963–1968

In 1963, Olivier became the first director of the National Theatre. The opening production was Hamlet in October 1963, starring Peter O'Toole and directed by Olivier.

In his decade in charge of the National, Olivier acted in thirteen plays and directed eight. His first leading role for the National was Othello, directed by John Dexter in 1964. The production was a box-office success and was revived regularly over the next five seasons.

In 1965, Olivier concentrated on management, directing one production (The Crucible), taking the comic role of the foppish Tattle in Congreve's Love for Love, and making one film, Bunny Lake is Missing.

In 1966, Olivier portrayed the Mahdi, opposite Charlton Heston as General Gordon, in the film Khartoum.

In 1967, Olivier began to suffer from stage fright, which plagued him for several years.

1968–1974

In 1968, Olivier agreed to serve a second five-year term as director of the National Theatre. His next major role was as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, his first appearance in the work. The production by Jonathan Miller and Olivier's performance attracted a wide range of responses.

In 1969, Olivier appeared in two war films, portraying military leaders. He played Field Marshal John French in the World War I film Oh! What a Lovely War, followed by Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding in Battle of Britain. In June 1970, he became the first actor to be created a peer for services to the theatre.

After this Olivier played three more stage roles: James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1971–72), Antonio in Eduardo de Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday and John Tagg in Trevor Griffiths's The Party (both 1973–74).

1975–1989: Later years and death

Olivier spent the last 15 years of his life securing his finances and dealing with deteriorating health. Professionally, he made a series of advertisements for Polaroid cameras in 1972, although he stipulated that they must never be shown in Britain; he also took a number of cameo film roles.

In 1973, he provided the narration for a 26-episode documentary, The World at War. In 1975 he won another Emmy for Love Among the Ruins. In 1976, he appeared in adaptations of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Harold Pinter's The Collection.

In 1978, he appeared in the film The Boys from Brazil, playing the role of Ezra Lieberman, an ageing Nazi hunter; he received his eleventh Academy Award nomination.

Olivier continued working in film into the 1980s, with roles in The Jazz Singer (1980), Inchon (1981), The Bounty (1984) and Wild Geese II (1985). He continued to work in television; in 1981 he appeared as Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited, winning another Emmy. In 1982, he received his tenth and last BAFTA nomination in the television adaptation of John Mortimer's stage play A Voyage Round My Father. In 1983, he played his last Shakespearean role as Lear in King Lear, for Granada Television, winning his fifth Emmy.

Olivier's final screen appearance was as an elderly wheelchair-using soldier in Derek Jarman's 1989 film War Requiem.

Olivier died on 11 July 1989 aged 82 at his home in the village of Ashurst, near Steyning, West Sussex.

Awards, honours and arms

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier received many awards and honors for his work in acting and directing. He was named a Knight Bachelor in 1947 and later became a life peer, taking the title Baron Olivier of Brighton in Sussex, in 1970. He was also given the Order of Merit in 1981 and received special honors from several countries, including Denmark, France, Italy, and Yugoslavia.

Olivier earned many awards for his film roles, including an Academy Award for Best Actor and several honorary Oscars. He also won awards from groups like the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Emmy Awards, and the Golden Globe Awards. In 1960, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 1977 he received a special award from the British Film Institute. The National Theatre’s biggest stage is named after him, and each year the Laurence Olivier Awards honor outstanding achievements in theater.

Technique and reputation

Laurence Olivier was famous for how carefully he prepared his roles. He often changed his looks a lot for each character, using makeup, wigs, and other props. He said he couldn't act as himself and needed to look different.

Olivier worked very hard on his performances, paying close attention to small details. Some people thought he focused too much on the "mechanics" and not enough on the feelings behind the role. He was also known for being very physical in his acting, moving his body strongly in many scenes. Olivier did not trust method acting and preferred his own way of performing. Together with his friends John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, he was one of the most famous actors on the British stage in the middle of the last century. Many people admired him and thought he made acting more exciting and special.

Main article: On Acting