Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, into a severe, confining religious household, presided over by a cleric who moved his family through a number of parish districts. Young Laurence took refuge in play-acting and had played several Shakesperean roles by his mid-teens. So successful was his portrayal of Puck in A Midsummer's Night Dream at the School of St. Edward that even his pious father encouraged him to apply to London's Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Arts. As a student there, Olivier secured his first professional acting credits -- as a stage manager and understudy in Through the Crack and as Lennox in Macbeth. Upon graduation, Olivier became a member of Sir Barry Vincent Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Company. He landed his first leading role, in Harold, at the age of twenty.
At first, Olivier's athleticism and elegant features typecast him as a young innocent hero. Although he appeared in a spate of London successes, such as Journey's End, The Last Enemy and Private Lives, he still struggled for serious recognition. His early film work was unimpressive, with no depth or passion beneath his matinee-idol looks; his outspoken disdain for film in general undoubtedly contributed to his wooden performances in YELLOW TICKET (1931) and PERFECT UNDERSTANDING (1933).
It was Shakespeare and Freud who turned Olivier's career around in the mid-1930s. In 1935, London was undergoing a Shakespeare revival, largely thanks to John Gielgud's successful production of Hamlet. For his next production, Gielgud chose Olivier to play Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and, in spite of complaints that his performance was shallow and athletic, the play was another huge hit. In 1937, Olivier was offered the role of Hamlet. Given a copy of Ernest Jones's Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis by the play's director, Tyrone Guthrie, Olivier became fascinated with the idea of adapting Freudian psychology to his character. Eschewing the flowery phrasing and artificial pretenses of previous Shakespearean performances, Olivier invented a new, staccato rhythm to reflect the psychological torment of the character. Audiences responded enthusiastically to his electrifying portrait of the doomed prince.
Olivier would bring this psychological intensity to bear upon his next important film performance, in WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939). Instead of a stock-in-trade doomed lover, Olivier played Heathcliff with a smouldering, dangerous undercurrent, one that carried over into his subsequent performances in REBECCA (1940), PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940) and THAT HAMILTON WOMAN (1941).
As a director, Olivier adapted this duality of artifice and immediacy to cinematic techniques in his Shakespearean films. HENRY V (1945) begins in a blatantly false Globe Theatre and gradually opens out into an intensely cinematic battle at Agincourt. HAMLET (1948) employs voice over interior monologues for Hamlet's soliloquies and enlists Wellesian deep focus and ominous moving-camera shots to convey the fetid atmosphere of the restricted castle setting of Elsinore. And RICHARD III (1955) uses eye contact with the camera to permit the audience to become accomplices in the comically maniacal Richard's conspiracies.
From the end of WWII to the early 70s, Olivier made sporadic film appearances, largely owing to his involvement in the administration of London's St. James Theatre in the late 40s and the National Theatre at the Old Vic from 1963 to 1973.
With the film version of John Osborne's play THE ENTERTAINER (1960), Olivier bade farewell to his romantic screen persona and introduced Olivier the character actor in the role of Archie Rice, the seedy, pathetic vaudevillian. Now he began making film appearances in small character roles, often virtually unrecognizable beneath heavy makeup. Most notable among these performances were the Madhi in KHARTOUM (1966), the reclusive mystery writer in SLEUTH (1972), and the evil Nazi dentist in MARATHON MAN (1976). In declining health, Olivier mustered his old fire in 1984 for a bittersweet, reflective television production of King Lear, a fitting swan song for an actor dedicated to depicting the life-spark of humanity.
He was knighted in 1947 and made a life peer in 1970. Married to actresses Jill Esmond from 1930 to 1940, Vivien Leigh from 1940 to 1960 and Joan Plowright from 1961 until his death in 1989.
Nominated for Actor 1939: WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Nominated for Actor 1940: REBECCA
Nominated for Actor 1946: HENRY V
Honorary Award 1946: "For his outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing HENRY V to the screen." Winner presented a Statuette.
Nominated for Directing 1948: HAMLET
Actor 1948: HAMLET
Nominated for Actor 1956: RICHARD III
Nominated for Actor 1960: THE ENTERTAINER
Nominated for Actor 1965: OTHELLO
Nominated for Actor 1972: SLEUTH
Nominated for Supporting Actor 1976: MARATHON MAN
Nominated for Actor 1978: THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL
Honorary Award 1978: "For the full body of his work, for the unique achievements of his entire career and his lifetime of contribution to the art of film." Winner presented a Statuette.
This is the text of Lord Olivier's acceptance speech as he stepped out to a standing ovation after he was introduced by Cary Grant at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles on April 9, 1979:
"Oh dear friends, am I supposed to speak after that? Cary, my dear old friend for many a year, from the earliest years of either of us working in this country. Thank you for that beautiful citation and the trouble you have taken to make it and all the warm generosities in it. Mr. President and governors of the Academy, committee members, fellows, my very noble and approved good masters, my colleagues, my friends, my fellow students: In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation's generosities this particular choice may perhaps be found by future generations as a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it -- the prodigal, pure, human kindness of it -- must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament which shines upon me at this moment dazzling me a little, but filling me with the warmth of the extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow. From the top of this moment, in the solace, in the kindly emotion that is charging my soul and my heart at this moment, I thank you for this great gift which lends me such a very splendid part in this, your glorious occasion. Thank you."
11 nominations, 1 Award, 2 Honorary Awards