7/70: While playing Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice" at the National Theatre, he was hospitalized with pleurisy and a thrombosis of the right leg. In September 1974 he fell ill during a holiday in Italy with director Franco Zeffirelli, and after x-rays and blood tests back in England at the Royal Sussex Hospital he was diagnosed with dermato-poly-myositis, a rare muscle disorder. For three months he remained critically ill in the hospital, and was told he could never act on stage again.
According to Spartacus (1960) co-star Peter Ustinov, Olivier felt most comfortable acting when wearing a wig, a fake nose or having some other elaborate make-up put on. He often insisted on this, even when it wasn't particularly required for the role he played.
According to Olivier in his autobiography "Confessions of an Actor," when he went to Hollywood in the early 1930s as the "next Ronald Colman", one studio wanted to change his name to "Larry Oliver." He often wondered what his career would have been like if he kept that less-distinguished name, whether his career would have been as sorry as the name.
According to producer Robert Evans, he could not obtain insurance for Olivier to appear in Marathon Man (1976). He went ahead with Olivier despite the obstacle. Evans and the rest of the production members, particularly Dustin Hoffman, were quite charmed by the man Hoffman called "Sir." Several years earlier, Evans -- as chief of production at Paramount -- had given the go-ahead to offer Olivier the role of Don Corleone in The Godfather (1972), but Olivier was unable to accept the role due to illness.
Actor William Redfield, a friend of Marlon Brando who played Guildenstern in the 1964 Richard Burton Hamlet (1964/I) directed by John Gielgud, writes in his 1967 memoir of the production "Letters from an Actor" that Brando had been considered the Great White Hope of his generation of American actors. That is, they believed that Brando's more naturalistic style, combined with his greatness as an actor, would prove a challenge to the more stylized and technical English acting paradigm epitomized by Olvier, Brando's rival as the world's greatest actor. Redfield would tell Burton stories of Brando, whom he had not yet met. Refield sadly confessed that Brando, by not taking on roles such as Hamlet, had failed to help American actors create an acting tradition that would rival the English.
Addressed President John F. Kennedy's inauguration on 20 January 1961.
Appeared with John Gielgud in Romeo and Juliet (1936) in which he and Gielgud alternated the roles of Romeo and Mercutio. Gielgud got the better reviews in the lead of Romeo, which spurred Olivier on to become a better actor.
Attended St. Edward's School, Oxford, a top British Boarding school.
Attended The Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Became friends with Wuthering Heights (1939) co-stars David Niven, Geraldine Fitzgerald and, eventually, Merle Oberon.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890- 1945". Pages 837-843. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
Directed 2 actors to Oscar nominations: Himself (Best Actor, Henry V (1944)); Best Actor, Hamlet (1948); Best Actor, Richard III (1955)), and Jean Simmons (Best Supporting Actress, Hamlet (1948)). He won an Oscar for his turn in Hamlet, making him and Roberto Benigni the only two actors to have directed themselves in Oscar-winning performances.
Even with his noble titles, he refused to carry on a conversation with anyone who wouldn't address him as "Larry."
Ex-brother-in-law of race car driver Jack Esmond.
Ex-son-in-law of actress Eva Moore. She was Jack and Jill Esmond's mother.
Ex-stepfather of Suzanne Farrington.
Father of four children: sons Tarquin Olivier and Richard Olivier, and daughters Julie Kate Olivier and Tamsin Olivier.
Father, with Jill Esmond, of son Tarquin Olivier.
Following a bad fall in March 1989, Olivier endured his final operation, a hip replacement. His sister Sybille died the following month at the age of 87. By early July his one remaining kidney was in a precarious state, and he was given a maximum of six weeks left to live. At the time of his death, at 11:15 a.m. on July 11, 1989, he had been ill for the last 22 years of his life.
Following the election of a new Labour government in the mid 1970s, Olivier found his tax rate almost doubled. Michael Caine advised him to to leave England, but Olivier was unwilling to do so. Caine then suggested he do every job offered to him - so Olivier appeared in many projects he otherwise would have passed on.