Laurence Olivier, the foremost actor of his generation and leader of the giants of the English-speaking theater, died Tuesday. He was 82.
He died "peacefully in his sleep," surrounded by friends and relatives, said his agent, Laurence Evans. The cause of death was not given."It's hard to think of a world without Laurence Olivier, and now it's happened, and it's hard to believe," said Rosemary Harris, who appeared with Olivier in the National Theater production of Hamlet in 1963 and in the film "The Boys from Brazil."
"He was the greatest actor of this century," said actor Anthony Hopkins, who worked with Olivier in two films, "A Bridge Too Far" and "The Bounty."
"He would hurl himself into the role, and that can be quite dangerous to limb and body. He had tremendous athletic daring," said Hopkins.
Flags at the National Theater were lowered to half-staff but no shows were canceled. "That would have been the last thing he would have wanted," said theater spokesman Stephen Wood.
Olivier's last professional appearance was in the 1988 movie "War Requiem," based on the oratorio by composer Benjamin Britten.
He was to be buried in a private funeral service, with a public memorial service to be held later, Evans said.
Knighted, ennobled and revered by the film and theater world, he was Lord Olivier when he died, one of the very few Britons to be given a seat in the House of Lords for his acting prowess.
His Hamlet, Henry V, Othello and Richard III were widely acclaimed, as well as, at age 76, his performance for television of King Lear. He was a tragic film hero in "Wuthering Heights" and portrayed the painful experience of aging in "The Entertainer" on stage and "A Voyage Round My Father" and "Brideshead Revisited" on television.
At the same time, with ferocious will, he fought cancer, pleurisy and a muscle disease that made even handshakes agony. He endured two miserable marriages and years of paralyzing stage fright, contemplated murder and suicide and battled his own rages, guilts and drinking.
On his 80th birthday, tributes flowed during a ceremony at the National Theater, which he founded in 1963.
"Awe and wonder, you gave us awe and wonder," actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft told him at the time. Director Peter Hall called him "the genius performer."
For Olivier, life and acting were inseparable. "I have to act to breathe," he said.
By turns, he loved and hated his craft - but never would contemplate retiring from it. Acting simply consumed him.
He was forever searching for new ways to broaden his range and reach the hearts of his audience. For instance, seeking to conjure up as abject a cry of despair as has ever been heard on stage, he would imagine the cry of the arctic seal when it licks the salt laid down by its hunters and its tongue sticks to the ice.
Born May 22, 1907, in the town of Dorking southwest of London, Laurence Kerr Olivier was the third child of an Anglican clergyman who encouraged him to try acting.
At age 10, he was Brutus in a school performance. At 15, he donned women's clothes to play Katherine in a Stratford Festival boys' production of "The Taming of the Shrew."
After studying acting in Birmingham, his first professional role was in 1922 in a sketch in a small touring company. In his first London role, in Alice Law's 1924 "Byron," he tripped over a doorsill and fell on his face.
His first marriage, to actress Jill Esmond in 1930, produced a son but ended in divorce. Meanwhile, his career was soaring through Noel Coward's "Private Lives" in London and New York, and Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," in which he and John Gielgud alternated playing Romeo and Mercutio.
With Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, fellow knights-to-be, he formed a partnership that re-made English theater.
Olivier played a dazzling succession of Shakespearean triumphs - Hamlet, Henry V, Macbeth. Movie stardom came in 1939 when he moved to Hollywood and made "Wuthering Heights."
In that same year, Olivier appeared with Vivien Leigh in a New York production of "Romeo and Juliet." After nearly two years of clandestine love, he obtained a divorce and the two were wed.
That marriage, glamorous in public, was another debacle. Leigh soon fell out of love, had a series of affairs and descended into manic depression that tormented Olivier. He had crippling bouts of stage fright and contemplated suicide.
They were divorced in 1961, and Olivier wed actress Joan Plowright.
During World War II, he made the three films that sealed his reputation as the finest Shakespearean actor in film: "Henry V," "Hamlet," for which he won a best-actor Oscar in 1949, and "Richard III."
In the 1960s and 1970s he had scores of memorable roles, from the fading comic Archie Rice in John Osborne's "The Entertainer" to Astrov in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" to the Nazi who tortures Dustin Hoffman in the film "Marathon Man."
His last public performance was a tape-recorded speech with extracts from Henry V, his contribution to a campaign to prevent developers covering up the ruins of the Rose Theater in London, where Shakespeare is thought to have acted.