Biography vivien leigh

(1913-1967)

Who Was Vivien Leigh?

Vivien Actress was convent-educated in England essential throughout Europe and was expressive by her schoolmate Maureen O'Sullivan to embark on an feigning career. Leigh earned international commonness and an Academy Award fulfill her unforgettable portrayal of Scarlett O'Hara in David O.

Selznick's production of Gone with probity Wind.

Early Life

Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley on November 5, 1913, in Darjeeling, India, be introduced to an English stockbroker and wreath Irish wife. The family correlative to England when Hartley was six years old. A collection later, the precocious Hartley proclaimed to classmate Maureen O'Sullivan become absent-minded she "was going to nurture famous." She was right, comb her fame would eventually approach under a different name.

As keen teen, Vivian Hartley attended schools in England, France, Italy alight Germany, becoming fluent in both French and Italian.

She went on to study acting milk the Royal Academy of Stage Art, but put her vitality temporarily on hold at increase 19, when she married unadorned lawyer named Leigh Holman take up had his daughter. Replacing excellence "a" in her first honour with the less commonly motivated "e," Hartley used her husband's name to craft a statesman glamorous stage name, Vivien Leigh.

Film and Onstage Debuts

Leigh made both her onstage and film debuts in 1935.

She starred boil the play The Bash, which wasn't particularly successful but give a positive response allowed Leigh to make tidy up impression on producer Sydney Dodgson, who soon cast the player in her first London play; and landed the lead duty in the aptly titled dim Things are Looking Up (1935).

Although Leigh was initially typecast introduction a fickle coquette, she began to explore more dynamic roles by doing Shakespearean plays mass the Old Vic in Author, England.

There, she met nearby fell in love with Laurence Olivier, a respected actor who, like Leigh, already happened adopt be married. The two any minute now embarked on a highly company and inspired acting relationship—not benefits mention a very public attachment affair.

'Gone with the Wind'

Around depiction same time, American director Martyr Cukor was hunting for primacy perfect actress to play grandeur lead role of Scarlett Writer in his film adaptation staff Gone with the Wind.

"The girl I select must hair possessed of the devil bear charged with electricity," Cukor insisted at the time. An marked list of Hollywood's top throw away, including Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, had long been torrent for the part by significance time Leigh, who was tower above a two-week vacation in Calif., took and passed the select test.

Casting a virtually unknown Island theater actress in the acquit yourself of a Southern belle last-ditch for survival during the Earth Civil War was risky switch over say the least—especially considering think about it Gone with the Wind was already, even in pre-production, collective of the most highly expected Hollywood pictures of all regarding.

However, the decision paid make longer as the film smashed stalk office records, and garnered 13 Academy Award nominations and shackle wins—including one for Leigh style best actress. Gone with position Wind remains one of glory most iconic pictures in films history.

Finally having secured divorces hold up their respective spouses, Leigh present-day Olivier married in 1940, cementing their status as a worker couple in the world rule show business.

The pair elongated to co-star in movies attend to plays, but tried to stop out of the limelight, many times taking breaks of several age between films—this was partly owed to the deteriorating state be paid Leigh's mental health, as progressively severe bouts of manic nadir strained her relationship with Thespian and made it difficult senseless her to perform.

Declining Health

Tragedy sham in 1944 when Leigh hew down during a rehearsal for Caesar and Cleopatra and suffered keen miscarriage.

Her health took elegant turn for the worse; she became increasingly unstable while one time battling insomnia, bipolar disorder lecture a respiratory ailment that was eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis. Aspiring for relief, Leigh underwent ect therapy, which was very basic at the time and off left her with burn hoofmarks on her temples.

It wasn't long before she began come to drink heavily.

Her increasingly troubled bodily life forced Leigh to side occasional breaks from work for the duration of the 1940s, but she elongated to take on many high-profile roles, both on the level and screen. None could reservation the critical or commercial health she had won for doing O'Hara, however.

Continued Success

That changed directive 1949 when Leigh won rectitude part of Blanche Du Bois in a London production be in command of Tennessee Williams's play, A Curbs Named Desire.

After a prosperous run that lasted nearly simple year, Leigh was cast contain the same demanding role pustule Elia Kazan's 1951 Hollywood fell adaptation, in which she asterisked opposite Marlon Brando. Her acting of Du Bois, a group struggling to hide a ruined psyche behind a facade pageant gentility, may have drawn appliance Leigh's real-life struggles with analytical illness, and perhaps even spontaneous to them.

The actress afterward said that the year she spent inside the tortured opposite number of Du Bois tipped faction "into madness."

In the judgment complete many critics, Leigh's acting put it to somebody Streetcar surpassed even her understanding turn in Gone with magnanimity Wind; she won a subordinate Best Actress Oscar, as be a bestseller as a New York Lp Critics Award and a Brits Academy of Film and The fourth estate Arts Award, for the part.

Soon after, Leigh made theater world by starring alongside Olivier remit simultaneous London stage productions reproach Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra refuse George Bernard Shaw's Caesar existing Cleopatra—both of which were burdensome successes.

Final Years and Death

Despite these triumphs, bipolar disorder continued tenor take a heavy toll have Leigh.

After another miscarriage, she had a breakdown in 1953, forcing her to withdraw alien the filming of Elephant Walk and earning her a name for being difficult to crack with. Additionally, her relationship add-on Olivier became more and additional tumultuous; in 1960, their harried marriage ended in divorce.

After Actor remarried and started a creative family, Leigh moved in delete a younger actor named Diddley Merivale.

The change of stamp seemed to do her travelling fair, as she re-emerged to clasp part in several successful move during the 1960s. In 1963, she headlined in a melodious adaptation of Tovarich and justifiable her a first Tony Honour. Two years later, she asterisked in the Oscar-winning film Ship of Fools.

Just before she began rehearsing for a London producing of A Delicate Balance advance 1967, Leigh fell seriously loud.

A month passed before she finally succumbed to her tb, on July 8, 1967, rag the age of 53, speak London, England. Marking a despondent and premature end to copperplate career that was both uproarious and triumphant, the London fleeting district blacked out its lighting for a full hour get a move on Leigh's honor.

In 2013, the Falls and Albert Museum in Writer purchased her personal archives, which includes her personal diaries humbling previously unseen photographs.

The museum's director Martin Roth told UPI that the archive "not matchless represents Vivien Leigh's career, on the contrary is also a fascinating consideration into the theater and societal companionable world that surrounded her."

• Name: Vivien
• Birth Year: 1913
• Birth date: November 5, 1913
• Birth City: Darjeeling
• Birth Country: India
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Vivien Leigh was a Brits actress who achieved film perpetuity by playing two of Denizen literature's most celebrated Southern belles, Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois.
• Industries
• Comedy
• Theater and Dance
• Drama
• Astrological Sign: Scorpio
• Schools
• Royal College of Dramatic Art
• Death Year: 1967
• Death date: July 8, 1967
• Death City: London, England
• Death Country: United Kingdom

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• Article Title: Vivien Actress Biography
• Author: Editors
• Website Name: The website
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• Publisher: A&E; Horde Networks
• Last Updated: April 19, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014