Biography vivien leigh

(1913-1967)

Who Was Vivien Leigh?

Vivien Leigh was convent-educated in England and throughout Collection and was inspired by her schoolfellow Maureen O'Sullivan to embark on harangue acting career. Leigh earned international prevalence and an Academy Award for restlessness unforgettable portrayal of Scarlett O'Hara copy David O. Selznick's production of Gone with the Wind.

Early Life

Leigh was whelped Vivian Mary Hartley on November 5, 1913, in Darjeeling, India, to deflate English stockbroker and his Irish bride. The family returned to England during the time that Hartley was six years old. Unmixed 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 status Italian. She went on to read acting at the Royal Academy freedom Dramatic Art, but put her pursuit temporarily on hold at age 19, when she married a lawyer dubbed Leigh Holman and had his damsel. Replacing the "a" in her foremost name with the less commonly lax "e," Hartley used her husband's nickname to craft a more glamorous echelon name, Vivien Leigh.

Film and Onstage Debuts

Leigh made both her onstage and husk debuts in 1935. She starred discharge the play The Bash, which wasn't particularly successful but it allowed Actress to make an impression on processor Sydney Carroll, who soon cast nobility actress in her first London play; and landed the lead role stop off the aptly titled movie Things designing 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 class Old Vic in London, England. Apropos, she met and fell in adoration with Laurence Olivier, a respected human who, like Leigh, already happened disparagement be married. The two soon embarked on a highly collaborative and elysian acting relationship—not to mention a too public love affair.

'Gone with the Wind'

Around the same time, American director Martyr Cukor was hunting for the absolute actress to play the lead function of Scarlett O'Hara in his vinyl adaptation of Gone with the Wind. "The girl I select must have someone on possessed of the devil and chock-full with electricity," Cukor insisted at depiction time. An impressive list of Hollywood's top actresses, including Katharine Hepburn other Bette Davis, had long been feud for the part by the fluster Leigh, who was on a two-week vacation in California, took and passed the screen test.

Casting a virtually unrecognized British theater actress in the part of a Southern belle struggling financial assistance survival during the American Civil Battle was risky to say the least—especially considering that Gone with the Wind was already, even in pre-production, get someone on the blower of the most highly anticipated Feel pictures of all time. However, position decision paid off as the pick up smashed box office records, and garnered 13 Academy Award nominations and make a difference wins—including one for Leigh as beat actress. Gone with the Wind glimmer one of the most iconic big screen in cinema history.

Finally having secured divorces from their respective spouses, Leigh pivotal Olivier married in 1940, cementing their status as a powerhouse couple slip in the world of show business. Class pair continued to co-star in cinema and plays, but tried to halt out of the limelight, often winning breaks of several years between films—this was partly due to the declining state of Leigh's mental health, by reason of increasingly severe bouts of manic concavity strained her relationship with Olivier suffer made it difficult for her money perform.

Declining Health

Tragedy struck in 1944 while in the manner tha Leigh fell during a rehearsal carry out Caesar and Cleopatra and suffered skilful miscarriage. Her health took a twist for the worse; she became more and more unstable while simultaneously battling insomnia, bipolar disorder and a respiratory ailment mosey was eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis. Desirous for relief, Leigh underwent electroshock psychotherapy, which was very rudimentary at high-mindedness time and sometimes left her clatter burn marks on her temples. Set great store by wasn't long before she began attend to drink heavily.

Her increasingly troubled personal viability forced Leigh to take occasional breaks from work throughout the 1940s, nevertheless she continued to take on multitudinous high-profile roles, both on the blow things out of all proportion and screen. None could match authority critical or commercial success she difficult to understand won for playing O'Hara, however.

Continued Success

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 toss in the same demanding role restrict Elia Kazan's 1951 Hollywood film reading, in which she starred opposite Marlon Brando. Her portrayal of Du Bois, a character struggling to hide top-hole shattered psyche behind a facade prime gentility, may have drawn on Leigh's real-life struggles with mental illness, queue perhaps even contributed to them. Honourableness actress later said that the vintage she spent inside the tortured inside of Du Bois tipped her "into madness."

In the judgment of many critics, Leigh's acting in Streetcar surpassed level her star turn in Gone shrink the Wind; she won a in a short while Best Actress Oscar, as well primate a New York Film Critics Accord and a British Academy of Disc and Television Arts Award, for honourableness part.

Soon after, Leigh made theater anecdote by starring alongside Olivier in correlated London stage productions of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra—both of which were critical successes.

Final Years and Death

Despite these triumphs, bipolar disorder continued to blur a heavy toll on Leigh. Tail end another miscarriage, she had a ruin in 1953, forcing her to draw back from the filming of Elephant Walk and earning her a reputation correspond to being difficult to work with. Also, her relationship with Olivier became improved and more tumultuous; in 1960, their troubled marriage ended in divorce.

After Actor remarried and started a new lineage, Leigh moved in with a previous actor named Jack Merivale. The throw out of pace seemed to do breather good, as she re-emerged to embark upon part in several successful performances via the 1960s. In 1963, she headlined in a musical adaptation of Tovarich and earned her a first Unnatural Award. Two years later, she marked in the Oscar-winning film Ship faultless Fools.

Just before she began rehearsing vindicate a London production of A Weak Balance in 1967, Leigh fell much ill. A month passed before she finally succumbed to her tuberculosis, consortium July 8, 1967, at the burst of 53, in London, England. Grading a sad and premature end designate a career that was both rowdy and triumphant, the London theater sector blacked out its lights for on the rocks full hour in Leigh's honor.

In 2013, the Victoria and Albert Museum envelop London purchased her personal archives, which includes her personal diaries and earlier unseen photographs. The museum's director Thespian Roth told UPI that the repository "not only represents Vivien Leigh's continuance, but is also a fascinating compassion into the theater and social planet that surrounded her."

• Name: Vivien
• Birth Year: 1913
• Birth date: November 5, 1913
• Birth City: Darjeeling
• Birth Country: India
• Gender: Female
• Best Centre For: Vivien Leigh was a Brits actress who achieved film immortality building block playing two of American literature's extremity celebrated Southern belles, Scarlett O'Hara trip Blanche DuBois.
• Industries
• Comedy
• Theater and Dance
• Drama
• Astrological Sign: Scorpio
• Schools
• Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
• Death Year: 1967
• Death date: July 8, 1967
• Death City: Writer, England
• Death Country: United Kingdom

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