Laurence Olivier Brief Biography

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM (22 May 190711 July 1989) was a British actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, he was the youngest actor to be knighted as a Knight Bachelor and the first to be elevated to the peerage. He was married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy stated that Olivier was "the greatest actor in the English-speaking world".

Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner. His career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Dr. Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil.

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