Olivia de Havilland

She is reported to be working on an autobiography. Her most recent public appearance was as a presenter at the 75th Annual Academy Awards in 2003. Deanna Durbin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1722 Vine St. A resident of Paris since the 1950s, de Havilland lives in retirement and makes appearances rarely. David died in Paris on March 1, 1999. She was reported to have declined the role of Blanche du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire, citing the unsavoury nature of the some elements of the script, and saying there were certain lines she could not allow herself to speak. She continued acting until the 1980s. Since then she has resisted all offers to perform and has refused to be interviewed, steadfastly asserting her right to privacy. De Havilland appeared sporadically in films after the 1950s, and attributed this partly to the growing permissiveness of Hollywood films of the period. The couple moved to Paris, France with Durbin stating she would never return to show business.

She won Best Actress Academy Awards for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949), and was also widely praised for her Academy Award nominated performance in The Snake Pit (1948). This was one of the earliest films to attempt a realistic portrayal of mental illness, and de Havilland was lauded for her willingness to play a role that was completely devoid of glamour and, which confronted such controversial subject matter. She retired from public life in 1950, after her marriage to Charles David, who had directed her in Lady On A Train. The quality and variety of her roles began to improve. By the late 1940s Durbin had tried to assume a more sophisticated film persona in such films as the whodunnit Lady On A Train (1945), but the public preferred her as the sweet and wholesome adolescent she had come to represent. Her courage in mounting such a challenge, and her subsequent victory, won her the respect and admiration of her peers. Her second marriage, to Felix Jackson, a writer, in 1945, produced her only child, Jessica Jackson, and ended in divorce in 1949. The decision was one of the most significant and far reaching legal rulings until that time in Hollywood. She married an actor, Vaughn Paul, in 1941 and they were divorced in 1943.

De Havilland mounted a lawsuit in the 1940s and was successful, thereby reducing the power of the studios and extending greater creative freedom to the performers. In 1939 she received a special Academy Juvenile Award, along with Mickey Rooney. Most accepted this situation, while a few tried to change the system; Bette Davis had mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit against Warner Brothers Studios in the 1930s. Durbin was quickly signed to a contract with Universal Studios and the huge success of her films were reported to have saved the studio from bankruptcy. In theory this allowed a studio to maintain indefinite control over an uncooperative contractree. Hollywood legend has recorded that he instructed his staff to "drop the fat one" and that they had dismissed Durbin, misunderstanding that Mayer had in fact intended to terminate the contract of Garland. The law allowed for studios to suspend contract players for rejecting a role, and for the period of suspension to be added to the contract period. Mayer felt he did not need two young female singers under contract.

She felt that she had proven herself to be capable of playing more than the demure ingenues and damsels in distress that were quickly typecasting her, and began to reject scripts that offered her this type of role. Durbin was released from her contract shortly thereafter as studio executive Louis B. Also by this time De Havilland was becoming increasingly frustrated by the roles being assigned to her. She made her first film Three Smart Girls in 1936. The sisters have remained estranged since this time. Changing her name to Deanna Durbin at the commencement of her career, Durbin signed a contract with MGM Studios in 1936 and made her first film appearance in a screen test with another contractee, Judy Garland. He records that the sisters had an uneasy relationship, and though each has refused to comment, Higham has stated that this event was the catalyst for what would become a lifelong fued. Deanna Durbin (born Edna Mae Durbin on December 4, 1921 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) was a popular singer and actress in Hollywood films.

Biographer Charles Higham has described the events of the award ceremony, stating that as Fontaine stepped forward to collect her award, she had pointedly rejected de Havilland's attempts at congratulating her, and that de Havilland was both offended and embarrassed by her behavior. Fontaine won for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) over de Havilland's nomination for Hold Back the Dawn (1941). De Havilland and her sister Fontaine, were each nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942. She played Melanie Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (1939) and received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance.

She appeared as Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), and played opposite Errol Flynn in such highly popular films as Captain Blood and The Charge of the Light Brigade (both 1936), and as Maid Marian to Flynn's Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). De Havilland's career began in Alibi Ike in 1935. Her sister is the actress Joan Fontaine (born 1917), from whom she is famously estranged. She is the daughter of British parents, patent attorney Walter de Havilland, and actress Lillian Fontaine.

Olivia Mary de Havilland (born July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan), is a US film actress. De Havilland was good friends with actress Bette Davis. Subsequently, the school's theater is named after her. De Havilland attended Los Gatos High School in Los Gatos, California as a teen.