Renowned actor and director Laurence Olivier achieved huge success with an array of theatre productions and films. He is commemorated by a blue plaque at 22 Lupus Street, Pimlico, where he lived as a child.

Laurence Kerr Olivier, known as Larry, was born in Dorking, Surrey, in 1907, the youngest of three children. A few years later, the family moved to London and by January 1913, they were living at 22 Lupus Street, Pimlico. This four-storey stuccoed house with a balustraded balcony dates from the 1840s. It lies close to St Saviour’s Church, where Olivier’s father was curate.

While living here, Olivier began to show a talent for acting. His sister Sybille recalled that he and their brother Dickie would mimic their father and other characters, such as seaside landladies. When Olivier was seven, he made a small stage in front of a window and would sing and dance for hours. He was introduced to professional theatre through his school’s annual trip to the pantomime. When Olivier performed as Brutus in a school production of Julius Caesar, the actress Ellen Terry noted his talent, writing in 1917 that he was ‘already a great actor’.

Stage success

Olivier studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama and then played several minor roles before joining the Birmingham Repertory Company in 1927. He met his first wife, the actress Jill Esmond, the following year, and they married in 1930. That year they both appeared in Noël Coward’s highly successful play Private Lives, which transferred to New York in 1931.

Olivier’s acting breakthrough came in 1935, when he appeared in John Gielgud’s production of Romeo and Juliet at the New Theatre. Peggy Ashcroft took the role of Juliet, Edith Evans played the nurse, and Gielgud and Olivier alternated the roles of Romeo and Mercutio. Olivier distinguished himself through the physicality and intensity of his performances and built his reputation as a superb Shakespearean actor with the lead roles in Old Vic Theatre productions of Hamlet (1937), Macbeth (1937) and Coriolanus (1938), and as Iago opposite Ralph Richardson in Othello (1938).

Move to film

By this point Olivier had fallen in love with the actress Vivien Leigh. They worked together on Alexander Korda’s film Fire over England (1937) and then travelled to Hollywood to pursue their careers there. Olivier honed the subtler techniques of film acting as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1938) and as Maxim de Winter in Rebecca (1939), while Leigh performed the role of her lifetime as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1940).

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the British government encouraged Olivier and Leigh to stay in America as ambassadors. They married in 1940. Olivier wanted to see action and was a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm but decided that he could best serve his country by returning to film. He began work on a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V (1944), the resonances of which were very strong at that time.

Olivier directed and starred in the film, which broke box office records and earned him a special Academy Award in 1947, ‘for his outstanding achievement as an actor, producer and director in bringing Henry V to the screen’. He made many more successful film adaptations of Shakespeare, including – perhaps most famously – Richard III (1955).

Post-war challenges

Olivier became co-director of the Old Vic in 1944 where he played a range of roles, including Astrov in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1945–6), Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Puff in Sheridan’s The Critic (1945–6) and the lead in King Lear (1946). He achieved huge success as Hotspur in Henry IV Part I (1945–6) and Justice Shallow in Henry IV Part II (1945–6). For many critics, these roles established him as the greatest actor of all time, and he was knighted in 1947, but discovered that he was to be sacked in 1949.

In 1950 he took a four-year lease on St James’s Theatre, Piccadilly, but his work as a manager and director there was not a financial success. He and Leigh also faced worsening problems in their marriage around this time. They appeared in many stage productions together during the 1950s but divorced in 1961.

Olivier appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in the film of Terence Rattigan’s The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) and appeared as Archie Rice in John Osborne’s The Entertainer (1957). This role introduced him to contemporary writing and to a younger generation of actors, including Joan Plowright. After a UK tour, he and Plowright took The Entertainer to New York and appeared in the film version. They married in 1961 and had three children: Richard, Tamsin and Julie.

Later career

The 1960s saw Olivier focus on theatre management as the first director of the Chichester Festival Theatre and as founder director of the National Theatre. The Old Vic became the temporary home of the National Theatre Company while its new South Bank home was being designed and built. Although behind the scenes he suffered a series of major illnesses and battled with stage-fright, he continued to win adoring reviews for his acting.

Olivier was created a life peer as Baron Olivier of Brighton in 1970, the first actor to be honoured in this way. He gave his final stage performance in 1974. He was increasingly disabled but put his energy into screen roles, including in Sleuth (1972), Marathon Man (1976) and A Bridge Too Far (1977), and television productions of The Merchant of Venice (1973), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Brideshead Revisited (1981) and King Lear (1982).  

He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1981 and published his autobiography, Confessions of an Actor, the following year. After he died in 1989 his ashes were interred in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. In 1984 the most prestigious awards in British theatre were renamed the Oliver Awards, and the main auditorium at the National Theatre now bears his name.

Further reading

• Michael Billington, ‘Olivier, Laurence Kerr, Baron Olivier (1907–1989)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) (access with a UK public library card)