WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers

Born: 22nd May 1907

Died: 11th July 1989 (aged 82)

Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking to the Reverend Gerard Kerr Olivier and his wife Agnes.  You could say that Olivier had it a lot easier than most of his contemporises when it came to becoming an actor as his father had an unrequited passion for the theatre and actually wanted his son to be an actor but there was one downside, which I will come to shortly. The young Laurence wowed audiences from a young age with his acting talent – Ellen Terry (Dame Ellen Terry a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) once wrote, upon seeing him perform at the age of 10, “The small boy who played Brutus is already a great actor.” When he was 17 his brother emigrated to India, Olivier’s mother had passed away when he was 13 and never having been close to his father he formed a strong bond with his siblings especially Gerard, so when he asked when he could follow his father told him that he wasn’t going to India he was going to be on the stage. Only this is where the downside came even though his father wished for his son to be an actor, and which we know he had a talent for, the only way Olivier would be able to attend the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art was with a scholarship his father was not going to pay for him. Luckily he won the scholarship! After leaving  Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art he started working for Sybil Thorndike and her husband as an assistant Stage Manager and understudy in London, a year later he joined the Birmingham rep where he met his first wife, Jill Esmond. In 1930 not only did Noel Coward cast him in his West End production of Private Lives but he also made his first film, The Temporary Widow

n.b the fourth film on this list should have been Romeo & Juliet but as I can’t really say anything about this as he is the Narrator and other voices, he goes uncredited and he did it all for the love of Shakespeare – not that I can blame him – I have jumped this film and replaced it with the six film on his list.

As Marcus Licinius Crassus in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus I feel that Olivier lacked a little, he didn’t have the presence that I was expecting from him, that was until towards the end when he confronts Varinia about her feelings for Spartacus then he came to life he had the dominance that I had been waiting for. He actually has fear in his eyes and there was anger there – you can feel both emanating from him through the screen; if this had been his portrayal throughout I would have been more appreciative of his performance! In A Bridge Too Far I found Olivier’s role as Doctor Spaander as the quiet within the storm. He only has a very small role but he plays the good doctor as if he was the lead and with so many big names (both British and American) it could be the sort of role that is lost if played by anyone else. He speaks a little German (maybe one line) but it’s the sort of thing some actors would dismiss as non essential but to make the effort shows the sort of actor he was. Next  we have Clash of the Titans and who else but a Shakespearean actor would have the gravitas to play Zeus, king of the Gods? Alright Liam Neeson played the role in the 2010 remake but he did not have the grandeur of Sir Laurence Olivier. Olivier has it all played with a little humour but the solemnity you would expect from a God. Yet there is a hint of viciousness especially when he orders Aphrodite to give Perseus Bubo, her beloved owl, it makes you wonder what fate would befall her if she refused! OK you know when people talk about a film or a scene from a film and it becomes like an urban legend? Well that’s what my thoughts were about Marathon Man but no everything people say about ‘that’ scene was exactly as terrifying as they said! Olivier plays a Nazi war criminal who at first sight seems a mild man, not one to get his hands dirt shall we say, even when he shaves his head you still think quite unassuming but that is the brilliance of Olivier performance you’d never expect him to do the things he does. Fron my understanding Olivier only took on the role of Dr. Christian Szell to make money for his wife and children as he was riddled with cancer and was believed to be dying, obviously he survived (he had another 13 years acting in him), but if he hadn’t taken this role for the reasons he did he would not have gained his first Oscar nomination for Best supporting (all his others were for Leading Roles) nor would he have been immortalised in the American Film Institute’s “100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains”. So, from Nazi war criminal to playing an American Jew in The Jazz Singer. It’s weird that Sir Laurence gets such a high billing when his character, Cantor Rabinovitch, is effectively an ancillary character – yes, he plays the lead’s father but the film is more about Jess’ early footsteps into the music business. Now I’m not very knowledgeable about the Jewish community and I don’t want to upset anybody but I do feel Olivier’s reaction to Jess’ divorce and new girlfriend was a little over the top but he is working alongside Neil Diamond (a born and bred Jew which I didn’t realise until now) so he would have known how the reaction should have been played and put him right if it seemed too much. It’s not that I’m saying Olivier does not do a good job he does it’s just that bit – I mean his role did make me cry a little, he has such a softness about him trying to understand his son’s choices but it was just that bit that took me a little out of the film. 

Now when it comes to talking about my favourite Sir Laurence Olivier role it would be easy for me to sit here and bore you all silly with how he plays Hamlet or Henry V – it’s Shakespeare there are some that can play it wrong but the words do it all for you so I’d probably wax lyrical about most taking on these roles. So no I won’t say these are my favourite of his roles but I am taking in a way harking back to his earlier stage career and his role of Archie Rice in John Osborne’s The Entertainer – some say Olivier asked Osborne to write the role specifically for him others say he asked Osborne to cast him his next play after seeing Look Back in Anger – but either way the role was a brilliant vehicle for Sir Laurence a way for him to be seen by a new audience. I don’t want to belittle the play by calling it a kitchen-sink drama but it does have all the components its gritty and down to earth it just doesn’t follow an everyday working class family as Archie and his family (apart from Jean and Michael) are theatre people and based towards the end of the Old Time Music Halls and Vaudeville show days. Olivier’s a wonderful Archie Rice; he sings and dances (a little tap but that’s still dancing) and he plays an aging Lothario very well – he has the patter that could make any young girl fall for him and he did both on and off screen (this was the film where he met and wooed Joan Plowright – a woman 22 years his junior!). Archie never switches off it’s like the stage personae is his mask to protect him from the outside world and Olivier’s performance makes you sympathise with those around Archie  until the mask drops and he tells Jean about hearing a woman singing during his time in Canada (I would use the quote here to help you understand but do not want to offend anyone with the language used) my heart broke – this selfish drunk who treats nearly everyone badly really has a heart. For me Sir Laurence Olivier doesn’t just play Archie Rice he is Archie Rice. I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone so I will just say I wish I was older so I could of had the opportunity to see Olivier play the role on stage the intimacy of a live performance always make the connection better but I thank him for taking on the film role so that his Archie Rice can live on forever.

Sir Laurence Olivier wasn’t just a stage actor he also directed plays and he was a co-director and manager of the, newly reformed, Old Vic Company alongside Ralph Richardson and John Burrell and with the formation of the National Theatre on the South Bank, in the 60s, he became their first director. He worked with many actors who were to become household names; Maggie Smith, Anthony Hopkins and Derek Jacobi to name a few. And although he made his name as a theatre actor, that was his love, and he seemed to find films more as a way to make big money – Noel Coward once called him a “sell-out” – it cannot go unnoticed that he was well recognised by the world of cinema. He was nominated ten times for Acting Oscars (won one) as well as a nomination, and win, for Directing. He won awards and had many Honorary Doctorates from around the world. He was married three times and had four children all of whom have followed their parents into the profession. He died of renal failure at the age of 82 and his ashes are buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Even though Sir Laurence Olivier made nearly eighty films that spanned sixty years it is on the theatre that he left his true mark. The largest auditorium in the National is called the Olivier, a statue was unveiled in his memory outside the National in 2007 and since 1984 the Society of London Theatre Awards have been called The Laurence Olivier Awards. He was one of the ‘great trinity of theatrical knights’* who dominated the stage in the 20th century. In his obituary for Sir Laurence, Bernard Levin wrote, “What we have lost with Laurence Olivier is glory. He reflected it in his greatest roles; indeed he walked clad in it – you could practically see it glowing around him like a nimbus. … no one will ever play the roles he played as he played them; no one will replace the splendour that he gave his native land with his genius.”  And I have to agree some may come close but they will always be overshadowed by Sir Laurence Olivier, Baron Olivier of Brighton, OM (Order of Merit)

*The ’great trinity of theatrical knights’ were – Sir Laurence Olivier (obviously) knighted in 1947 (the youngest actor to be knighted), Sir Ralph Richardson knighted in 1947 (six months before Olivier) and Sir John Gielgud knighted in 1953