Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989), was an English actor and director. Alongside John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave, and Ralph Richardson, he was one of four leading male actors who defined mid-20th-century British theatre. Over six decades, he also appeared in more than fifty films and, later in his career, found significant success on television.

Olivier came from a family with no theatrical background. His father, a clergyman, decided his son would become an actor. After drama school in London, Olivier spent the late 1920s learning his craft through a series of acting jobs. His first major West End success came in 1930 with Noël Coward’s *Private Lives*, and he made his film debut that same year. In 1935, he performed in a celebrated production of *Romeo and Juliet* alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was a well-known star. During the 1940s, he co-directed the Old Vic with Ralph Richardson and John Burrell, turning it into a highly respected company. His most famous roles there included Shakespeare’s Richard III and Sophocles’ Oedipus.

In the 1950s, Olivier worked as an independent actor-manager, but his stage career slowed until 1957, when he joined the avant-garde English Stage Company to play the title role in *The Entertainer*, a part he later played on film. From 1963 to 1973, he was the founding director of Britain’s National Theatre, running a resident company that helped launch many future stars. His own roles there included Othello (1965) and Shylock in *The Merchant of Venice* (1970). Among his films are *Wuthering Heights* (1939), *Rebecca* (1940), and a trilogy of Shakespeare films he both acted in and directed: *Henry V* (1944), *Hamlet* (1948), and *Richard III* (1955). Later films include *Spartacus* (1960), *The Shoes of the Fisherman* (1968), *Sleuth* (1972), *Marathon Man* (1976), and *The Boys from Brazil* (1978). His television work included adaptations of *The Moon and Sixpence* (1960), *Long Day’s Journey into Night* (1973), *Love Among the Ruins* (1975), *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* (1976), *A Little Romance* (1979), *Brideshead Revisited* (1981), and *King Lear* (1983).

Olivier received a knighthood in 1947, a life peerage in 1970, and the Order of Merit in 1981. For his screen work, he won an Academy Award, five BAFTAs, five Emmys, and four Golden Globes, and was nominated for a Tony, two BAFTA Television Awards, and a Grammy. He also received two non-competitive Academy Honorary Awards (1947 and 1979), the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award (1983), and a BAFTA Fellowship (1976). The National Theatre’s largest auditorium is named after him, and the Laurence Olivier Awards are given annually by the Society of London Theatre. He was married three times: to actresses Jill Esmond (1930–1940), Vivien Leigh (1940–1960), and Joan Plowright (1961 until his death), and had four children.

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 (née Crookenden). He had an older sister, Sybille, and an older brother, Gerard Dacres “Dickie.” His great-great-grandfather was of French Huguenot descent, and Olivier came from a long line of Protestant clergymen. Gerard Olivier started as a schoolmaster but, in his thirties, felt a strong religious calling and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England. He belonged to the high church, ritualist wing of Anglicanism and was known as “Father Olivier.” Some Anglican congregations disliked this style, so he only received temporary posts, often filling in for regular ministers. This meant the family moved constantly, and for his first few years, Laurence never stayed in one place long enough to make friends.

In 1912, when Olivier was five, his father got a permanent job as assistant rector at St Saviour’s, Pimlico, a post he held for six years, finally giving the family stability. Olivier was devoted to his mother but found his father cold and distant, though he learned a great deal about performing from him. As a young man, Gerard Olivier had considered a stage career and was a dramatic, effective preacher. Olivier wrote that his father knew “when to drop the voice, when to bellow about the perils of hellfire, when to slip in a gag, when suddenly to wax sentimental… The quick changes of mood and manner absorbed me, and I have never forgotten them.”

In 1916, after several preparatory schools, Olivier passed a singing exam to enter the choir school of All Saints, Margaret Street, in central London. His older brother was already a pupil, and Olivier gradually settled in, though he felt like an outsider. The church’s worship style was Anglo-Catholic, with an emphasis on ritual, vestments, and incense. The theatricality of the services appealed to Olivier, and the vicar encouraged students to enjoy secular as well as religious drama. In a 1917 school production of *Julius Caesar*, the ten-year-old Olivier played Brutus and impressed an audience that included Lady Tree, the young Sybil Thorndike, and Ellen Terry, who wrote in her diary, “The small boy who played Brutus is already a great actor.” He later won praise in other schoolboy productions, as Maria in *Twelfth Night* (1918) and Katherine in *The Taming of the Shrew* (1922).