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Actors
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Sir Laurence Olivier - 7
Biographical InformationLaurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, in 1907. He trained with Elsie Fogerty at her Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art and proved to be a natural actor. In 1922 he appeared at Stratford in a schoolboy production of The Taming of the Shrew in which his performance as Katharina was described by Sybil Thorndike as "the best Kate I have ever seen." He began his professional theatrical career with Barry Jackson's Birmingham Rep, probably the leading rep company in the country at the time. In 1928 he created the part of Stanhope in R.C. Sheriff's Journey's End, but them made one of the mistakes that was to characterise a lot of his professional career: instead of playing the part in the West End transfer of the play, he instead took the lead in a very commercial version of Beau Geste, and it flopped badly. In 1930 he played Victor Prynne in Private Lives, which was directed by Noel Coward and starred both Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. It is said that he found being in Coward's shadow frustrating, but it did give him his first taste of success on Broadway as well as in the West End. He was married three times: his first wife was the actress Jill Esmond, with whom he had a son. They played together in the 1937 Old Vic season in Twelfth Night. They divorced in 1940 and, in the same year, he married Vivien Leigh who had played Ophelia to his Hamlet at Elsinore in 1937. However Vivien Leigh's life was plagued by physical and mental health problems (she suffered from manic depression), which adversely affected both her career and her marriage and the couple divorced in 1960. He married his third wife, the actress Joan Plowright, in 1961, and they remained married until his death. Olivier was knighted in 1947 and, in 1971, became the first actor to receive a life peerage when he became the Baron Olivier of Brighton. Because of his wide range of experience as actor, director and producer, to say nothing of his reputation as Britain's greatest actor, he was the natural choice for first director of the new National Theatre company, which opened at the Old Vic in 1963. He remained in that post for ten years, but they were hard years: there was the constant delay which afflicted the building of the new complex on the South Bank; the government wanted a National Theatre but wanted to spend as little as possible; he suffered from cancer and other major illnesses. In 1971 he was upset by the act that the governors of the NT appointed Peter Hall as his successor, but not only did they not consult Olivier but it was some months afterwards that he found about about it. He resigned as NT director in 1973, two years before the building was finished. He made no more stage appearances after leaving the NT, but did make 16 films and 16 TV appearances, including his brilliant King Lear in 1984. He died in 1989 after being dogged by ill health for some time. Next Page: Critical Comment Theatre: 20s and 30s |
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