Olivier

by Terry Coleman

"In this biography, acclaimed biographer Terry Coleman draws for the first time on the vast archive of Olivier's private papers and correspondence and those of his family, finally revealing the history and the private self that Olivier worked so masterfully all his life to obscure. Olivier maintained a volatile connection between his acting and his personal relationships. Following the death of his mother when he was eleven, Olivier was defined by a passionate devotion to the women closest to him." "And for Olivier, acting and sex were for him inseparable: his turbulent marriage to Gone With the Wind star Vivien Leigh became both a powerful inspiration and a relentless torment, and for twenty years the two were the royal family of the British stage. Through this and other famous romances - including his third marriage, to Joan Plowright - as well as trysts with lesser-known mistresses, his romantic life was constantly entangled with his stage work, each feeding the other and driving Ol