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Vivien Leigh (November 5, 1913 – July 8, 1967) was a two-time Academy Award
winning English actress.
She won two Oscars playing "southern belles": Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the
Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had
also played in London's West End. She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in
collaboration with her husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of
her roles.
During her thirty-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from the
heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean
characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth.
One example of her range is the fact that she played Cleopatra, in both the
comedy-drama and classic drama contexts (Shaw's and Shakespeare's), during the same
period of time, alternating between the two plays on stage when the different
performances were scheduled..
Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken
seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle.
Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult life, she gained a reputation
for being a difficult person to work with, and her career went through periods of
decline.
She was further weakened by recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, with which she was
first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh
worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis.
 Awards and
nominations
1939 Academy Award for Best Actress (won)
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (won) Gone with the Wind
1952 Academy Award for Best Actress (won)
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (won)
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama (nominated)
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (won)
Venice Film Festival - Volpi Cup (won) A Streetcar Named Desire
1963 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical (won) Tovarich
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Vivien
Leigh - Manifesting Generator - Biography
