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. Larger Version See trench coat. A resident of Paris since the 1950s, de Havilland lives in retirement and makes appearances rarely. In 2000, she had a brief run on the American soap opera All My Children. 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. She has appeared in such films as Walk, Don't Run, Doctor Dolittle The Molly Maguires (1970), and The Brood. De Havilland appeared sporadically in films after the 1950s, and attributed this partly to the growing permissiveness of Hollywood films of the period. By 1965, she had received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Collector.

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. Born Victoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar in Hampstead, London, England, she began her acting career in several Shakespearean companies, and debuted in film in 1962 in The Wild and the Willing. The quality and variety of her roles began to improve. Samantha Eggar (born March 5, 1933) is a British actress. Her courage in mounting such a challenge, and her subsequent victory, won her the respect and admiration of her peers. The decision was one of the most significant and far reaching legal rulings until that time in Hollywood.

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. 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. In theory this allowed a studio to maintain indefinite control over an uncooperative contractree. 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.

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. Also by this time De Havilland was becoming increasingly frustrated by the roles being assigned to her. The sisters have remained estranged since this time. 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.

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.