Laurence Olivier

LAURENCE OLIVIER d1989. English actor director and producer generally considered to have been one of the greatest of the 20th century. During a six-decade career, he played many roles on stage and screen. His three Shakespeare films as actor-director ; Henry V (1944) / Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955) are among the pinnacles of the bard at the cinema. On stage his more than 120 roles included ; Richard III / Macbeth / Romeo / Hamlet / Uncle Vanya and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films including ; Wuthering Heights (1939) and Rebecca (1940). He was the founding artistic director of the National Theatre Company in 1963, a post in which he remained for a decade. He had earlier filled the same post at the Old Vic after the Second World War. The largest stage in the National Theatre building was later named after him. He was knighted in 1948. He retired from the stage in 1974, but his work on-screen continued until the year before his death of renal failure aged 82 in 1989.