It's 100 years since the birth of Sir Laurence Olivier. Today's Guardian reproduces a selection of stills from some of his most celebrated roles, including that of Maxim de Winter alongside Joan Fontaine in Hitchcock's Rebecca. Great look, don't you think? Overcoat, pencil 'tache, pinkie ring and that hair lotion wave in his hair? Plus the fear in the eyes. Dash and vanity and desperation all rolled into one. Though no Olivier expert I've always been struck by how different he looks in every image of him I see. Maybe Michael Billington's appreciation of his acting talents explains why:
"Olivier's ability to reinvent himself from role to role was part of his glamour and mystery - and those are words we rarely use in connection with acting today. There is a palpable loss in that we know almost too much about our public performers. Olivier kept his secrets so that even the polite fiction of his happy marriage to Vivien Leigh was sedulously maintained: only later did one learn that, during his triumphant season at Stratford, he was frequently driven to sleeping on his dressing-room floor to get a bit of peace."
The whole piece is here.
He was such a genius. And you're right - one can barely recognise him from one role to the next.
Posted by: Quink | May 16, 2007 at 06:41 PM