50 Fun Facts About Laurence Olivier

In which Surrey town was Laurence Olivier born in 1907?

He was the youngest child of a high-church Anglican priest known as Father Olivier, and came from a long line of Protestant clergymen.

Who decided that the young Olivier should become an actor?

The family had no theatrical connections at all; the frugal Reverend Olivier also insisted his son win a scholarship to drama school.

Which future Dame, Olivier's contemporary at the Central School, called him 'rather uncouth' with short sleeves?

Principal Elsie Fogerty later said that the two of them stood out among all her pupils.

Olivier's first important West End success came in 1930 as Victor Prynne in which play?

The author played Elyot opposite Gertrude Lawrence at the new Phoenix Theatre and called Victor and Sybil 'extra puppets'.

In the famous 1935 Romeo and Juliet, Olivier and John Gielgud did what partway through the run?

The production broke box-office records for the play, running for 189 performances, though Olivier was enraged by his reviews.

In June 1937 the Old Vic took Olivier's Hamlet to perform at which real location from the play?

Torrential rain forced the show into a hotel ballroom, but Olivier had secured Vivien Leigh as Ophelia and a tradition was born.

Which Emily Brontë character did Olivier play in his 1939 Hollywood breakthrough?

A $50,000 salary lured him to Wuthering Heights opposite Merle Oberon and David Niven, directed by William Wyler.

Olivier played the brooding widower Maxim de Winter in which 1940 Hitchcock film?

It was Hitchcock's first American film; producer David O. Selznick cast Joan Fontaine rather than Vivien Leigh partly to keep the lovers apart until their divorces came through.

Which naval hero did Olivier play opposite Vivien Leigh in the 1941 wartime film That Hamilton Woman?

Alexander Korda directed it with Churchill's support and involvement as propaganda for the British cause.

Olivier's first film as director, in 1944, was which Shakespeare play, made as a wartime morale booster?

The British government part-funded it, and the battle scenes were shot in neutral Ireland where 650 extras were easier to find.

Which composer wrote the score for Olivier's Henry V?

Robert Newton played Pistol and Leslie Banks the Chorus in a film first dedicated to Britain's Commandos and Airborne Troops.

Olivier's 1948 Hamlet was the first British film to win which Academy Award?

Olivier also took Best Actor and the Golden Lion at Venice, despite purists' fury at ninety minutes of cuts.

How much of the play's roughly four-hour running time did Olivier cut for his 1948 film of Hamlet?

He dropped Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's political intrigue to focus on the relationships.

Which honour did Olivier receive in the 1947 Birthday Honours?

The peerage followed in 1970, after he declined it in 1967, and the Order of Merit in 1981.

With John Burrell and a famous fellow actor, Olivier co-directed which London company in the 1940s?

His most celebrated roles there were Richard III and Sophocles's Oedipus, the latter paired in one evening with Sheridan's farce The Critic.

In the 1938 Old Vic Othello, Olivier played Iago to whose Othello?

Director Tyrone Guthrie wanted Iago driven by suppressed love for Othello; Richardson would not play along and audiences missed the point.

Which Roman general did Olivier play in Kubrick's Spartacus (1960)?

Charles Laughton was Gracchus and Peter Ustinov the gladiator-school owner Batiatus; Olivier got a Golden Globe nomination.

Olivier's seedy music-hall comedian Archie Rice appears in which John Osborne play?

He asked for the part after reading only the first act, having long joked he could have been a third-rate comic called Larry Oliver.

Which American star did Olivier direct and act opposite in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)?

Her husband Arthur Miller took Olivier to see Look Back in Anger during filming, which changed the direction of his career.

Olivier was the founding director of Britain's National Theatre during which years?

The company played at the Old Vic until 1976, when the largest auditorium of the new South Bank building, named after him, was complete.

Which festival theatre did Olivier direct from 1961, staging Uncle Vanya in its opening season?

His forty-strong company included Sybil Thorndike, Michael Redgrave and Joan Plowright.

Which Italian director called Olivier's 1964 Othello 'an anthology of everything that has been discovered about acting'?

Directed by John Dexter, the production was a box-office hit revived over five seasons, though it divided critics.

Olivier's last stage appearance in a Shakespeare play, at the National in 1970, was as which character?

He agreed to a second five-year term because the new building was so delayed, and later played Lear only on television in 1983.

Which literary adviser did Olivier recruit for the National Theatre, later clashing with the board over Soldiers?

The board vetoed Rolf Hochhuth's play because it depicted Churchill as complicit in the death of Poland's General Sikorski.

In Sleuth (1972) Olivier's crime novelist Andrew Wyke plays cat and mouse with which co-star?

Both men were Oscar-nominated, and it was Joseph L. Mankiewicz's final film.

What is the name of the Nazi war criminal Olivier plays in Marathon Man (1976)?

The dentist-torturer ranked 34th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest villains and won Olivier a Golden Globe.

Who plays the graduate student and distance runner tortured by Olivier's character in Marathon Man?

John Schlesinger directed William Goldman's adaptation of his own 1974 novel.

In The Boys from Brazil (1978), Olivier's Nazi hunter pursues which real Auschwitz doctor, played by Gregory Peck?

Ira Levin's plot has the fugitive doctor ordering the murder of 94 sixty-five-year-old civil servants for a cloning scheme.

Which aristocrat did Olivier play in the 1981 television serial Brideshead Revisited, winning an Emmy?

It was one of five Emmys he won; his last BAFTA nomination came for A Voyage Round My Father the following year.

Olivier's final Shakespearean role, for Granada Television in 1983, was which king?

He had already played the part on stage decades before at the Old Vic.

How many times did Olivier marry?

Jill Esmond from 1930, Vivien Leigh from 1940 and Joan Plowright from 1961 until his death; he had four children.

For which two film roles did Vivien Leigh, Olivier's second wife, win Best Actress Oscars?

She had played Blanche on the London stage in 1949 and later won a Tony for the musical Tovarich.

Olivier's third wife, Joan Plowright, first acted opposite him in which play in 1957?

She later won a Tony for A Taste of Honey and was made a Dame in 2004; she died in January 2025 aged 95.

What was the name of Olivier's son with his first wife Jill Esmond?

Olivier called that first marriage 'a pretty crass mistake' within weeks of the 1930 wedding.

Which friend told Olivier 'You've no artistic integrity' when he took a Hollywood contract in 1931?

RKO was offering $1,000 a week; the resulting films flopped and Olivier soon returned to the London stage.

For his life peerage in 1970, Olivier took the title Baron Olivier of which seaside town?

He sat in the Lords as a crossbencher and had turned down the same honour three years earlier.

In 1972 Olivier filmed adverts for which product, on condition they never aired in Britain?

He was by then coping with thrombosis and dermatomyositis, a degenerative muscle disorder, and took many cameo film roles for money.

Which musical role did Olivier hope to play at the National but never could because of ill health?

His last three stage roles instead included James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night.

Where were Olivier's ashes buried after his death in 1989?

Gielgud unveiled his memorial stone there in 1991, and a statue went up outside the National Theatre for his centenary in 2007.

London's top stage prizes were renamed in Olivier's honour in 1984. Under what name did they start out?

Presented by the Society of London Theatre, they are considered the British equivalent of Broadway's Tonys.

How many Shakespeare films did Olivier direct?

Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III; the 1936 As You Like It starred him but was directed by Paul Czinner.

Which fellow actor, cast as Edward IV, was one of the 'quartet of knights' in Olivier's Richard III (1955)?

The Technicolor film's prologue admits that history without its legends would be 'a dry matter indeed'.

Which three actors join Olivier as the quartet who dominated the mid-century British stage?

He worked with all three, sharing the Old Vic directorship with Richardson.

How many hours of flying had Olivier logged in America before returning to Britain hoping to join the RAF?

He was instead put to work narrating the propaganda film 49th Parallel; Goldwyn and DeMille had provided security against Nazi threats.

The rep company in which English city, joined in 1926, was called 'Olivier's university'?

There he began a lifelong friendship with fellow actor Ralph Richardson.

Olivier created which role in R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End at its 1928 Sunday-night premiere?

He then turned down the West End run for the title role in Beau Geste, which flopped.

In which neutral country were the battle scenes of Olivier's Henry V filmed?

It was easier to find the 650 extras there; John Betjeman, then press attaché in Dublin, helped with arrangements.

In the 1966 film Khartoum, Olivier played the Mahdi opposite whom as General Gordon?

The previous year he had appeared with Noël Coward in Bunny Lake Is Missing.

Which honour did Olivier receive in 1981?

It followed his knighthood in 1947 and life peerage in 1970.

How much did RKO offer Olivier per week in the 1931 contract that took him to Hollywood?

His first film there was Friends and Lovers, in a supporting role.