Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier was an English actor and director regarded by many of his contemporaries as the foremost classical performer of the twentieth century. Born in 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, the son of an Anglican clergyman, he was schooled at All Saints in Margaret Street and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

After early stage work in repertory he joined the Old Vic in 1937, where his Hamlet, Henry V, and Coriolanus established him as a leading Shakespearean actor. In Hollywood he played Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights in 1939 and Maxim de Winter in Hitchcock's Rebecca in 1940, both of which brought Oscar nominations.

Olivier directed and starred in three Shakespeare films that combined commercial success with critical respect: Henry V in 1944, Hamlet in 1948, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Best Picture Oscar, and Richard III in 1955. From 1963 he was the founding director of the National Theatre of Great Britain at the Old Vic and led it for a decade, building the company that later moved to the South Bank.

He was knighted in 1947, made a life peer as Baron Olivier of Brighton in 1970, and received an honorary Academy Award in 1979. He continued to work in film and television until shortly before his death in 1989 at his home in Steyning, West Sussex. The Society of London Theatre's annual awards are named the Oliviers in his honour.

The name Laurence comes from the Latin Laurentius, meaning man from Laurentum, a town near Rome whose name evokes the laurel tree. He bore it as a masculine given name long established in English use.