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Olivia de Havilland

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Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland
Birth: 1 July 1916
Tokyo, Japan
Death: 26 July 2020
Paris, Ile-de-France, France
Age: 104 years, 25 days
Country: United KingdomUK United StatesUSA
Centenarian

Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland DBE (1 July 1916 – 26 July 2020) was a British and American centenarian and actress. The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading actors of her time. She was the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner until her death in 2020 and was widely considered as being the last surviving major star from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Her younger sister was Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine.

Biography[]

De Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan on 1 July 1916. By birth, Olivia was member of De Havilland family which belonged to landed gentry that originated from mainland Normandy. Her mother, Lilian Fontaine (née Ruse; 1886–1975), was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and became a stage actress. Olivia's father, Walter de Havilland (1872–1968), served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo City before becoming a patent attorney.

Her younger sister Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, later known as actress Joan Fontaine, was born 15 months later on 22 October 1917. Both sisters became British subjects automatically by birthright.

Career[]

De Havilland first came to prominence with Errol Flynn as a screen couple in adventure films such as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). One of her best-known roles is that of Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she received her first of five Oscar nominations, the only one for Best Supporting Actress. De Havilland departed from ingenue roles in the 1940s and later distinguished herself for performances in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949), receiving nominations for Best Actress for each and winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She was also successful in work on stage and television. De Havilland lived in Paris from the 1950s and received honors such as the National Medal of the Arts, the Legion d'honneur, and the appointment to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In addition to her film career, de Havilland continued her work in the theatre, appearing three times on Broadway, in Romeo and Juliet (1951), Candida (1952), and A Gift of Time (1962). She also worked in television, appearing in the successful miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979) and Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Movie or Series. During her film career, de Havilland also collected two New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup. For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She and her sister remain the only siblings to have won major acting Academy Awards.

Personal life[]

On 26 August 1946, she married Marcus Goodrich, a U.S. Navy veteran, journalist, and author of the novel Delilah (1941). The marriage ended in divorce in 1953. They had one child, Benjamin Goodrich, who was born on 27 September 1949. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 19, and graduated from the University of Texas. He worked as a statistical analyst for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California, and as an international banking representative for the Texas Commerce Bank in Houston. He died on September 29, 1991, in Paris at the age of 42 of heart disease brought on by treatments for Hodgkin's disease, three weeks before the death of his father.

On 2 April 1955, de Havilland married Pierre Galante, an executive editor for the magazine Paris Match. Her marriage to Galante prompted her relocation to Paris. The couple separated in 1962, but continued to live in the same house for another six years to raise their daughter together. Galante moved across the street and the two remained close, even after the finalisation of the divorce in 1979. She looked after him during his final bout with lung cancer prior to his death in 1998. They had one child, Gisele Galante, who was born on 18 July 1956. After studying law at the Université de Droit de Nanterre School of Law, she worked as a journalist in France and the United States. Since 1956, de Havilland lived in a three-storey house near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

De Havilland died of natural causes in her sleep at her home in Paris, France on 26 July 2020 at the age of 104 years, 25 days. Her funeral was held on 1 August 2020, at the American Cathedral in Paris. After cremation her ashes were placed in the crematorium-columbarium of the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise; the urn containing them will later be transferred to a family burial place on the British island of Guernsey in the English Channel.

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