22 May: Laurence Olivier

Born on this date in 1907 was Laurence Olivier. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Laurence Olivier was born in Dorking in Surrey. His father was an Anglican priest.
2. He made his acting debut at the age of 10 in a school play where he played Brutus in Julius Caesar. As it happened, three famous actresses of the time were in the audience – Sybil Thorndike, Lady Tree and Ellen Terry. Ellen Terry recorded in her diary the opinion that “The small boy who played Brutus is already a great actor.”
3. His first film was made in 1930 and was called Too Many Crooks. Sadly, however, there are no known copies of the film in existence.
4. His big Hollywood break came in 1938 but it nearly didn’t happen. The original choice to play Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights was an actor called Robert Newton. The studio executives vetoed him, because they didn’t consider him good looking enough, and offered the role to Olivier instead. They wanted him to change his name to something more American sounding – Larry Oliver. Olivier refused.
5. In Hamlet, he was 11 years older than the actress who played his mother.
6. He was married three times. He married Jill Esmond in 1930 but both of them soon realised it had been a mistake and they didn’t actually love each other. Nevertheless they stayed married for 10 years by which time he was having an affair with Vivien Leigh, who he married after his divorce. This marriage ended in divorce, too, but he was married to his third wife, Joan Plowright, until he died.
7. Not every film he made was a success. In 1981 he accepted a role in a film called Inchon, which was funded by cult leader Sun Myung Moon, about a battle in the Korean War. The film was such a flop that it wasn’t even released on video and Olivier was awarded the Razzie Award for worst actor that year. Why did he even do it, you might be asking? He admitted himself that he only did it for the money.
8. He was knighted in 1947 and made a peer in 1970 – Baron Olivier of Brighton in the County of Sussex, to be exact. He won honours in other countries, too. He was named a Commander of the Order of Denmark, an Officer of the French Legion of Honour, a Grand Ufficiale of the Italian Order of Merit, and awarded the Order of the Yugoslav Flag with Golden Wreath.
9. In 1984, the awards previously known as the Society of West End Theatre Awards (SWETS) were re-named the Olivier Awards. Despite being a legendary actor, he never actually won one but was given the Special Award in 1979. The previous year, his wife, Joan Plowright, won the Best Actress Olivier for her role in Filumena.
10. He died from renal failure in 1989, and his ashes are buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. His last screen appearance was earlier that year, as a wheelchair bound veteran in War Requiem.

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