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Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh

Birthday: 1913-11-05 | Place of Birth: Darjeeling, Bengal Presidency, British India [now West Bengal, India]

Vivien Leigh (born Vivian Mary Hartley, and also known as Lady Olivier after 1947; 5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967) was an English stage and film actress. She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, for her iconic performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963). After completing her drama school education, Leigh appeared in small roles in four films in 1935 and progressed to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that her physical attributes sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. Despite her fame as a screen actress, Leigh was primarily a stage performer. During her 30-year career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet, and Lady Macbeth. Later in life, she performed as a character actress in a few films. At the time, the public strongly identified Leigh with her second husband Laurence Olivier, who was her spouse from 1940 to 1960. Leigh and Olivier starred together in many stage productions, with Olivier often directing, and in three films. She earned a reputation for being difficult to work with, and for much of her adult life she suffered from bipolar disorder as well as recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, which was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s and ultimately claimed her life at the age of 53. Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Leigh as the 16th greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema. Description above from the Wikipedia article Vivien Leigh, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

2009
1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year

as    Self (archive footage)

1965
Ship of Fools

as    Mary Treadwell

1961
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

as    Karen Stone

1955
The Deep Blue Sea

as    Hester Collyer

1951
A Streetcar Named Desire

as    Blanche DuBois

1951
The Screen Director

as    Self (archive footage) (uncredited)

1946
Caesar and Cleopatra

as    Cleopatra

1941
That Hamilton Woman

as    Emma, Lady Hamilton

1940
Waterloo Bridge

as    Myra

1940
21 Days

as    Wanda

1939
Gone with the Wind

as    Scarlett O'Hara

1938
A Yank at Oxford

as    Elsa Craddock

1938
St. Martin's Lane

as    Liberty

1937
Fire Over England

as    Cynthia

1937
Dark Journey

as    Madeleine Goddard

1937
Storm in a Teacup

as    Victoria Gow

1935
Things Are Looking Up

as    Schoolgirl