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 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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