Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh (November 5, 1913 - July 8, 1967) was an English actress who was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India. She and her parents later moved to England, where young Leigh grew up. She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, England, along with fellow actress-to-be Maureen O'Sullivan.

She was married at nineteen to Leigh Holman, and they had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1933.

Leigh's career began on the stage. Her first play was The Green Sash, though it was Mask of Virtue that really brought her to stardom. In 1935, she began her film career with such movies as The Village Squire, Things are Looking Up, and Look Up and Laugh. Leigh is best known, however, for her role of Scarlett O'Hara in the American film Gone With the Wind (1939), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress .

In 1940, Leigh arranged for a divorce from Holman and married British theatre star Laurence Olivier. The pair had met in 1935 and had begun a rather public love affair. At the time, both were married (Olivier to actress Jill Esmond).

In 1944, the actress was diagnosed as having a tuberculosis patch on her left lung. Though she continued her career with such plays as Thorton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth[?], and the 1946 film Caesar and Cleopatra[?], her illness was getting worse. In 1951, however, Leigh won a second Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

By the early 1960s, Leigh had suffered two miscarriages and the severity of the tuberculosis was incapacitating. She had also been plagued by manic-depression for some time. In 1960, she and Olivier divorced on supposedly friendly terms. Leigh continued to keep a framed photograph of him on her bedside table, even while living with companion Jack Merivale.

The actress died of chronic tuberculosis in her London home[?]. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered on the lake at Tickerage Mill[?], near Blackboys[?], Sussex, London, England.

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Filmography:

1934:

• Things Are Looking Up

1935:

• The Village Squire
• Gentleman's Agreement
• Look Up And Laugh

1937:

• Fire Over England[?]
• Dark Journey
• Storm In A Teacup
• Twenty-One Days

1938:

• A Yank At Oxford
• St. Martins Lane

1939:

• Gone With the Wind

1940:

• Waterloo Bridge[?]

1941:

• That Hamilton Woman[?]

1945:

• Caeser and Cleopatra[?]

1947:

• Anna Karenina

1951:

• A Streetcar Named Desire

1955:

• The Deep Blue Sea

1961:

• The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone[?]

1965:

• Ship of Fools

Leigh has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6773 Hollywood Blvd.

Eternal Links:

• "Biography.com, Leigh, Vivien" (http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=5889)