Director William Wyler said she could play the role of Isabella. When Olivier was cast as Heathcliff in 1939’s Wuthering Heights, Leigh campaigned to play Cathy. On screen they finally collaborated in That Hamilton Woman (1941), a British film so hot in its sizzle and pro-English sentiment that Winston Churchill made the couple drinking buddies and sent a print to FDR as proper propaganda.

They married in 1940 (after shaking off each’s own ex-spouse), and the couple performed together in a lavish Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet, as well as Anthony and Cleopatra on the West End. Their affair began a year later while co-starring in the British film, Fire Over England. Leigh had given a performance on the London stage. Olivier was married to actress Jill Esmond when they first met in 1936. Before Brangelina, Liz and Dick, or even Bogie and Bacall, their match was mythological, even by Hollywood standards. Her relationship with Shakespearean acting icon Laurence Olivier was one of love and tragedy, which could have been written by the Bard himself. She was the first British woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress, thanks again to Scarlett. She had a near-photographic memory and knew her lines after one or two readings of a play.

Leigh is one of the best actresses of all-time. Her condition was believed to have been triggered by a devastating miscarriage in 1945, but evidence of the illness surfaced long before the incident and before any diagnosis would be then available. In reality, she fought a lifelong battle with bipolar disorder during a time the illness wasn’t discussed. Up until quite recently, Vivien Leigh, the legendary star of stage and screen, was branded with the label nymphomaniac, a derogatory-sounding term which makes it sound like she was a sex addict. Like his character on American Horror Story, Dylan McDermott’s fictional Ernie is renowned for a certain largesse, and he bestows his beneficence on Leigh, who also carries a secret.

At the after party, all of the celebrities entertain illicit passion for a predetermined price. In between bites, and biting remarks by the ever-incisive Tallulah Bankhead, we are treated to Vivien Leigh, played by Katie McGuinness, giving an impromptu reading of her captivating and iconic Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). On Netflix’s new series Hollywood, the Stallions of the Gas Station, circa 1947, fill up a dinner party being thrown by legendary filmmaker George Cukor. This article contains mild Hollywood spoilers.

Dark star vivien leigh