From a Surrey childhood to the stages of London and the screens of Hollywood, Laurence Olivier became the actor against whom all others were measured — especially when the words were Shakespeare’s.
Laurence Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, on 22 May 1907, the son of a clergyman. He trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and by the late 1920s he was working on the London stage. His early film work included Wuthering Heights (1939) and Rebecca (1940), in which his brooding intensity made him a star in Hollywood as well as in Britain.
Olivier’s great achievement was to bring Shakespeare to a wide audience. He directed and starred in Henry V (1944), filmed during the Second World War, and in Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955), in which he played the title roles with a combination of poetry, wit and menace. On stage he was equally celebrated, in roles from Henry V to Archie Rice in The Entertainer (1960), and he became the first director of the National Theatre in London in 1963.
He was married to Vivien Leigh from 1940 to 1960, a partnership that was famous on both sides of the Atlantic. Olivier continued acting into his later years, in films such as Sleuth (1972) and Marathon Man (1976). He died in Steyning, West Sussex, on 11 July 1989. His legacy is that of a complete actor: a star, a director and a champion of the theatre, who made Shakespeare feel alive for modern audiences.