Product Description

Laurence Olivier is a complex and unexpected portrait of a man tormented by his own ruthless genius and everlasting guilt. It is the story of a High Church clergyman's son who became a West End matinee idol, and only at the age of twenty-eight determined to make himself a great Shakespearean actor, which he did in one season at the Old Vic. The next year he made himself a Hollywood star in "Wuthering Heights" and Rebecca, then produced, directed and acted in his own Shakespeare movies. Work and sex were for him inseparable: acting, he once said, was like coming for a living. Having abandoned his first wife, he entered a turbulent marriage with the manic-depressive Vivien Leigh. She dominated his life for twenty years and they became the royal family of the British stage. Then, to save himself and his work, he 'dropped the legend' and wrenched himself away from her, and was ever afterwards tormented by a sense of sin which only heroic and incessant work could expiate. He married Joan Plowright, a generation younger than himself, had a new young family, and became founding director of the National Theatre. But even the National, in his view, ended in betrayal and tragedy. For twenty years he was stricken by one illness after another. When he could no longer stand on a stage he acted sitting down. In his last years he played so many famous death scenes that when he died at the age of eighty-two, his son half expected him to emerge from the house to be congratulated on yet another. St Paul's and Westminster Abbey, the two principal theatres of the Church of England, outbid each other to stage the positively final appearance of the man universally seen as the most magical actor of his day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #287816 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

Review
'It is not simply the elegant style delivered with magisterial authority, or the sharp understanding of what's significant and what isn't, or even the fine storyteller's gift; it is, above all, the sheer diligence with which the author has done his research' Guardian on NELSON 'This book is written in the very best of revisionist history: it is well-researched, closely argued and at odds with received wisdom, long overdue' Sunday Telegraph on NELSON 'This momentous movement has now found its perfect chronicler. Coleman is that rare phenomenon, an absolutely original writer' The Times on PASSAGE TO AMERICA

Simon Callow, Guardian
‘Coleman is an immensely distinguished journalist and biographer … It is stuffed with fascinating new information’

Sunday Times
‘Tremendous … the chapters on his period at the National Theatre convey pathos and understanding’

Customer Reviews

A masterly biography
I wonder how long it took Terry Coleman to complete the research for this book? Quite a time, I should think and he has made a terrific job of it.

When a `warts and all' biography is published, it is often the case that the biographer can overstep the mark into salacity but not here. The breakdown of the marriage between Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh is carefully and tactfully recounted. The Olivier family (plus quite a lot of others) have contributed to this splendid tribute to the man that I believe was Britain's greatest actor. A beautifully written book.

Brilliant and insightful
There are at least two other books about Olivier currently in print, including his autobiography: both hold claims to being the "definitive work". Meticulously researched, thoughtful and insightful, Coleman's is easily the best of the three. I would put the autobiographical CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTOR in second place and the recently reissued Holden biography (which, sadly, seems to have had the most press coverage) in third, as it seems to me redundant.

The genius of this book is that the reader really feels an insight into the personality of its subject: Coleman avoids almost completely the "Olivier did this; then he did that" style that, sadly, many biographers fall into.

Considered in its treatment of the controversial aspects of Olivier's personality such as his sexuality, and yet fortright about his character flaws, Coleman's is probably the best biography I have ever read.