biography
| name: |
Olivier (of Brighton), Laurence (Kerr) Olivier, Baron
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1907–89)
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| biography:
| Actor, producer, and director, born in Dorking, Surrey, SE England, UK. He trained in London, and began his career at Birmingham in 1926, joining the Old Vic, London, in 1937. He played all the great Shakespearean roles, while his versatility was underlined by his virtuoso display in The Entertainer (1957) as a broken-down low comedian. After war service he became co-director of the Old Vic (1944). His films include Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III. Divorced from his first wife, Jill Esmond in 1940, in the same year he married English actress Vivien Leigh. They were divorced in 1961, and he then married English actress Joan Plowright. He became first director of the Chichester Theatre Festival (1962) and of the National Theatre (1963–73). After 1974 he appeared chiefly in films and on television, notably in Brideshead Revisited (1982) and King Lear (1983). He was knighted in 1947, and made a life peer in 1970. |
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