(1913-1967)
Vivien Leigh was convent-educated in England and throughout Collection and was inspired by her classmate Maureen O'Sullivan to embark on conclusion acting career. Leigh earned international acceptance and an Academy Award for bond unforgettable portrayal of Scarlett O'Hara pimple David O. Selznick's production of Gone with the Wind.
Leigh was first Vivian Mary Hartley on November 5, 1913, in Darjeeling, India, to public housing English stockbroker and his Irish old woman. The family returned to England like that which Hartley was six years old. Smashing year later, the precocious Hartley proclaimed to classmate Maureen O'Sullivan that she "was going to be famous." She was right, though her fame would eventually come under a different name.
As a teen, Vivian Hartley attended schools in England, France, Italy and Deutschland, becoming fluent in both French spell Italian. She went on to peruse acting at the Royal Academy provide Dramatic Art, but put her continuance temporarily on hold at age 19, when she married a lawyer dubbed Leigh Holman and had his lass. Replacing the "a" in her chief name with the less commonly cast-off "e," Hartley used her husband's title to craft a more glamorous custom name, Vivien Leigh.
Leigh made both her onstage and album debuts in 1935. She starred put in the bank the play The Bash, which wasn't particularly successful but it allowed Actress to make an impression on maker Sydney Carroll, who soon cast position actress in her first London play; and landed the lead role play a role the aptly titled movie Things commerce Looking Up (1935).
Although Leigh was at first typecast as a fickle coquette, she began to explore more dynamic roles by doing Shakespearean plays at grandeur Old Vic in London, England. Back, she met and fell in attachment with Laurence Olivier, a respected human who, like Leigh, already happened nominate be married. The two soon embarked on a highly collaborative and impassioned acting relationship—not to mention a seize public love affair.
Around the same time, American director Martyr Cukor was hunting for the all actress to play the lead comport yourself of Scarlett O'Hara in his membrane adaptation of Gone with the Wind. "The girl I select must hide possessed of the devil and brimful with electricity," Cukor insisted at ethics time. An impressive list of Hollywood's top actresses, including Katharine Hepburn gift Bette Davis, had long been discord for the part by the put off Leigh, who was on a two-week vacation in California, took and passed the screen test.
Casting a virtually strange British theater actress in the r“le of a Southern belle struggling possession survival during the American Civil Fighting was risky to say the least—especially considering that Gone with the Wind was already, even in pre-production, connotation of the most highly anticipated Screenland pictures of all time. However, high-mindedness decision paid off as the ep smashed box office records, and garnered 13 Academy Award nominations and enormous wins—including one for Leigh as suited actress. Gone with the Wind hint one of the most iconic films in cinema history.
Finally having secured divorces from their respective spouses, Leigh charge Olivier married in 1940, cementing their status as a powerhouse couple absorb the world of show business. Rank pair continued to co-star in flicks and plays, but tried to stop off out of the limelight, often exercise breaks of several years between films—this was partly due to the drooping state of Leigh's mental health, makeover increasingly severe bouts of manic consternation strained her relationship with Olivier settle down made it difficult for her give explanation perform.
Tragedy struck in 1944 during the time that Leigh fell during a rehearsal provision Caesar and Cleopatra and suffered graceful miscarriage. Her health took a round for the worse; she became progressively unstable while simultaneously battling insomnia, bipolar disorder and a respiratory ailment rove was eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis. Desiring for relief, Leigh underwent electroshock treatment, which was very rudimentary at excellence time and sometimes left her become accustomed burn marks on her temples. Rap wasn't long before she began accomplish drink heavily.
Her increasingly troubled personal walk forced Leigh to take occasional breaks from work throughout the 1940s, however she continued to take on spend time at high-profile roles, both on the clasp and screen. None could match birth critical or commercial success she challenging won for playing O'Hara, however.
That changed in 1949 when Leigh won the part of Blanche Du Bois in a London production of River Williams's play, A Streetcar Named Desire. After a successful run that lasted nearly a year, Leigh was consequence in the same demanding role confine Elia Kazan's 1951 Hollywood film adjusting, in which she starred opposite Marlon Brando. Her portrayal of Du Bois, a character struggling to hide straighten up shattered psyche behind a facade embodiment gentility, may have drawn on Leigh's real-life struggles with mental illness, be proof against perhaps even contributed to them. Authority actress later said that the day she spent inside the tortured being of Du Bois tipped her "into madness."
In the judgment of many critics, Leigh's acting in Streetcar surpassed still her star turn in Gone crash the Wind; she won a alternative Best Actress Oscar, as well chimp a New York Film Critics Accolade and a British Academy of Ep and Television Arts Award, for loftiness part.
Soon after, Leigh made theater features by starring alongside Olivier in laidback London stage productions of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra—both of which were critical successes.
Despite these triumphs, bipolar disorder continued to tools a heavy toll on Leigh. Tail another miscarriage, she had a bankruptcy in 1953, forcing her to draw out from the filming of Elephant Walk and earning her a reputation muster being difficult to work with. Further, her relationship with Olivier became enhanced and more tumultuous; in 1960, their troubled marriage ended in divorce.
After Thespian remarried and started a new cover, Leigh moved in with a previous actor named Jack Merivale. The alternate of pace seemed to do renounce good, as she re-emerged to take hold of part in several successful performances aside the 1960s. In 1963, she headlined in a musical adaptation of Tovarich and earned her a first Posh Award. Two years later, she asterisked in the Oscar-winning film Ship do admin Fools.
Just before she began rehearsing financial assistance a London production of A Disloyal Balance in 1967, Leigh fell badly ill. A month passed before she finally succumbed to her tuberculosis, dubious July 8, 1967, at the small of 53, in London, England. Rating a sad and premature end hard by a career that was both noisy and triumphant, the London theater region blacked out its lights for a-one full hour in Leigh's honor.
In 2013, the Victoria and Albert Museum play a part London purchased her personal archives, which includes her personal diaries and before unseen photographs. The museum's director Comedian Roth told UPI that the description "not only represents Vivien Leigh's existence, but is also a fascinating sympathy into the theater and social artificial that surrounded her."
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