Hildegard Knef

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. Hildegard Knef was one of the most important actresses of post-war Germany. Leigh has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6773 Hollywood Blvd. She was sometimes compared to that other great German actress, Marlene Dietrich, in that they both were, or portrayed as, the liberated, self-confident woman. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered on the lake at Tickerage Mill, near Blackboys, Sussex, London, England. The incident in the latter film sparked one of the largest scandals in German filmmaking history and drew the criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. The actress died of chronic tuberculosis in her London home.

Arguably, her most influential roles included that of Susanne Wallner in Wolfgang Staudte's film "Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us)" (the first film released after the Second World War in East Germany and produced by the Soviet filmmaking enterprise DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme) as well as her role as Marina in "Die Sünderin (The Sinner)" in which she performed the first nude scene in German filmmaking. Joan Plowright, third wife and widow of Olivier, later claimed that during much of Olivier's marriage to Leigh he was having a longterm homosexual relationship with the American actor Danny Kaye. She was billed in some English language films as Hildegard Neff. Leigh continued to keep a framed photograph of him on her bedside table, even while living with her companion, actor John Merivale. Hildegard Knef (December 28, 1925 - February 1, 2002) was a German actress, singer and writer. In 1960, she and Olivier divorced on supposedly friendly terms. She had also been plagued by manic-depression for some time, which was believed to be a factor in the failure to cure her ailment.

By the early 1960s Leigh had suffered two miscarriages, and the severity of the tuberculosis was incapacitating. In 1951, however, Leigh won a second Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Though she continued her career with such plays as Thornton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth, and the 1946 film Caesar and Cleopatra, her illness was getting worse. In 1944, the actress was diagnosed as having a tuberculosis patch on her left lung.

At the time, both were married (Olivier to actress Jill Esmond who was pregnant when the affair began). The pair had met in 1935 and had begun a rather public love affair. In 1940, Leigh arranged for a divorce from Holman and married British theatre star Laurence Olivier. Leigh is best known, however, for her role of Scarlett O'Hara in the American film Gone With the Wind (1939), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1935, she began her film career with such movies as The Village Squire, Things are Looking Up, and Look Up and Laugh. Her first play was The Green Sash, though it was Mask of Virtue that really brought her to stardom. Leigh's career began on the stage. She was married in 1932 to Herbert Leigh Holman, and they had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1933.

She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, England, along with fellow actress-to-be Maureen O'Sullivan. She and her parents later moved to England, where young Leigh grew up. Vivien Leigh (November 5, 1913–July 7, 1967) was an English actress who was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India. Ship of Fools (1965).

Stone (1961). The Roman Spring of Mrs. The Deep Blue Sea (1955). A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

Gone With the Wind (1939). Martins Lane (1938). St. A Yank At Oxford (1938).