Vivien Leigh: The Life Story Behind the Gone With the Wind Star

Vivien Leigh played two of the most famous women in the history of film, and she played them so well that it is hard, even now, to imagine anyone else in the parts. She was Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, the beautiful, stubborn, selfish, brave Southern girl who survives a war, who loses everything, who says, tomorrow is another day, and who becomes, for millions of people, the image of a woman who will not give up. She was Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, the fragile, fading Southern belle who comes to live with her sister in New Orleans, who invents a past, who is destroyed by a brutal man, and who leaves, in the end, depending on the kindness of strangers. Both performances won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and both are still, today, counted among the greatest performances ever given on screen.

Behind those performances was a life that was both brilliant and painful. Leigh was born in India, she was educated in England, she married young, she became famous young, she married Laurence Olivier, the great actor, she became, with him, the most famous acting couple in Britain, she worked on stage and on screen, she was beautiful, she was talented, she was admired, and she suffered, for much of her adult life, from mental illness and from tuberculosis, illnesses that shaped her work, that shaped her marriages, that shaped her relationships, and that, in the end, killed her at the age of fifty-three. This is her story, told plainly, with respect for her talent and for her suffering, and without turning her illness into a simple explanation for her genius, because she was, first and last, a great actress, not only a sick woman.

Darjeeling, a Convent School and a Girl Who Wanted to Act

Vivian Mary Hartley was born on 5 November 1913 in Darjeeling, in India, which was then part of the British Empire. Her father, Ernest Hartley, was a British officer in the Indian cavalry, and her mother, Gertrude Robinson, was of Irish and Armenian heritage, and the family lived, for the first years of Vivian’s life, in India, in a world of heat, of servants, of British officials, and of a vast country that was, to a small child, both beautiful and strange. When she was six, she was sent to England, to a convent school in Roehampton, the Sacred Heart Convent, where she was educated by nuns, where she learned to act in school plays, and where she first discovered, in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that she loved the stage, that she loved becoming another person, and that she was good at it.

She was, by all accounts, a pretty, clever, determined child, who knew, from an early age, that she wanted to be an actress, and who told her friends, with a confidence that was, in retrospect, remarkable, that she was going to be famous. She went on to study in Europe, in France and in Italy, she learned languages, she learned manners, she learned to be a young lady in the English sense, and she returned to England, at eighteen, to marry Herbert Leigh Holman, a barrister, a kind, steady man who was thirteen years older than she was, and who, in 1933, became her first husband. They had a daughter, Suzanne, born in 1933, and Vivian, who had taken her husband’s name, Leigh, and who had shortened her first name to Vivien, began to think, seriously, about acting as a career, not only as a dream.

She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, RADA, the most famous acting school in Britain, though she did not finish the course, and she began to appear in small parts in films, in plays, in London, in a world that was, in the 1930s, full of young actors trying to make a name for themselves. She was beautiful, she was talented, she was ambitious, and she was, by all accounts, a hard worker, a woman who learned her lines, who listened to directors, who watched other actors, and who was determined to succeed. Her first film roles were small, in films such as Things Are Looking Up in 1935, and Fire Over England in 1937, in which she appeared with a young actor named Laurence Olivier, a meeting that would change both their lives completely.

She was, in those early years, a young mother, a young wife, and a young actress, trying to balance three lives at once, and finding, as many young women do, that the balance was hard, that acting demanded time, travel, late nights, and that marriage demanded stability, and that motherhood demanded presence. She loved her daughter, she loved her husband, in her own way, but she also loved acting, and acting, in the end, won, as it often does for people who are truly called to it, and her marriage to Holman ended, in divorce, in 1940, after she had met Olivier and fallen in love with him, a love that would become one of the great love stories of the theatre, and one of the great tragedies of both their lives.

London Stages, Laurence Olivier and a Love That Changed Everything

Vivien Leigh met Laurence Olivier in 1935, on the set of Fire Over England, and they fell in love, though both were married to other people at the time. Olivier was, already, a rising star in the theatre, a handsome, talented actor who was, in many ways, the leading man of his generation, and Leigh was a young actress who was, in many ways, his equal in talent, in ambition, and in beauty. They began an affair, they acted together in plays, including Hamlet, in which Olivier played Hamlet and Leigh played Ophelia, and they became, in London, the most talked-about couple in the theatre, a couple whose love was, in the eyes of many people, scandalous, and in the eyes of others, romantic, a love that seemed, to those who saw them together, to be real, deep and inevitable.

They married in 1940, after both had divorced their first spouses, in a ceremony in California, with Katharine Hepburn and Garson Kanin as witnesses, and they became, for the next twenty years, the most famous acting couple in the English-speaking world, the Oliviers, a name that meant, to theatre lovers, the best of British acting, the best of Shakespeare, the best of the stage. They worked together, they lived together, they travelled together, they built a life together, and they were, for a time, happy, in a way that few couples are happy, because they shared a work, a passion, a world, and because they understood each other as artists in a way that nobody else could.

Leigh’s career on stage, in those years, was as important as her career on screen. She played in Shakespeare, in plays by Shaw, in modern plays, and she was, by all accounts, a great stage actress, a woman who could hold a theatre, who could make an audience laugh and cry, who could play comedy and tragedy, and who was, in the eyes of many critics, even better on stage than she was on screen. She played Cleopatra, she played Lady Macbeth, she played in The Skin of Our Teeth, and she was, in the 1940s and 1950s, one of the leading actresses in Britain, a woman whose name on a poster meant that a play was worth seeing.

Her personal life, during those years, was complicated by illness. She began, in the 1940s, to suffer from what was then called manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder, a mental illness that causes periods of great energy, of excitement, of sleeplessness, and periods of deep depression, of sadness, of exhaustion, and she also suffered from tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs that had, for centuries, killed many people, and that, in Leigh’s case, would return again and again, weakening her, making her cough, making it hard for her to work, and, in the end, killing her. It is important to say this plainly, without sensational detail, and without turning her illness into a romantic story, because it was not romantic. It was painful, it was frightening, and it affected everyone around her, especially Olivier, who loved her, who tried to help her, and who, in the end, could not save her from herself.

Gone with the Wind and Scarlett O’Hara

In 1938, Leigh was in Hollywood, visiting Olivier, who was making a film there, and she was introduced to David O. Selznick, the producer who was making Gone with the Wind, the film based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel about the American Civil War, about Scarlett O’Hara, a Southern girl who survives the war, who loses her home, who marries, who loses husbands, who loves a man who does not love her, and who, in the end, says, tomorrow is another day, and goes on. Selznick had been searching for an actress to play Scarlett for two years, he had tested hundreds of women, he had considered many famous stars, and he had not found the right one, until, so the story goes, he saw Leigh, in a screen test, in the middle of a fire scene, and he knew, at once, that she was Scarlett.

The film, released in 1939, was a huge success, the biggest film of its time, a film that won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and that made Leigh, overnight, a world star. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance, and she became, in the eyes of millions of people, Scarlett O’Hara, a character who is beautiful, stubborn, selfish, brave, and, above all, a survivor, a woman who will do anything to live, to keep her home, to keep her family, to keep herself. It was a part that suited Leigh, who was herself beautiful, stubborn, and a survivor, and it was a part that would follow her for the rest of her life, a part that audiences would always associate with her, even when she played other, very different women.

Making Gone with the Wind was not easy. The film was long, it was expensive, it was shot over many months, in difficult conditions, with a large cast, with a director who was changed in the middle of production, with a script that was rewritten, and with Leigh, who was, by all accounts, a professional, a hard worker, who learned her lines, who worked long hours, and who gave, in every scene, a performance that was, in the words of many critics, perfect. She was, in the film, in almost every scene, and she carried the film, as Scarlett carries the novel, with a strength and a vulnerability that made audiences love her, even when Scarlett was being selfish, even when she was being cruel, because they understood, as Leigh understood, that Scarlett was doing what she had to do to survive.

The success of Gone with the Wind changed Leigh’s life completely. She was now a Hollywood star, a woman who could command a huge salary, who could choose her films, who was recognised everywhere, and who was, at the same time, a stage actress in London, a wife to Olivier, and a mother to a daughter who was growing up in England. It was a life of great fame and great pressure, and it was a life that, in many ways, was too much for her, too much travel, too much work, too much attention, and too much illness, all at once.

Waterloo Bridge, That Hamilton Woman and the War Years

After Gone with the Wind, Leigh made Waterloo Bridge in 1940, a film about a ballerina in London during the First World War, who falls in love with a soldier, who loses him, who becomes a prostitute to survive, and who dies, in the end, on the bridge where they first met. It was a sad, romantic film, and Leigh was, in it, beautiful and tragic, and the film was a success, though not as great a success as Gone with the Wind. She made That Hamilton Woman in 1941, with Olivier, a film about Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, a historical romance that was, in part, a piece of wartime propaganda, a film meant to encourage Britain and America to stand together against Hitler, and it was, in that sense, a film with a purpose beyond entertainment, a film that Leigh and Olivier believed in, and that they made with pride.

During the Second World War, Leigh and Olivier worked to support the war effort, they toured, they performed for troops, they made films, and they lived, for the most part, in England, in a country that was being bombed, that was rationing food, that was losing men, and that needed, more than ever, the theatre, the cinema, and the arts, as a way of keeping spirits up. Leigh was, during the war, already ill, already suffering from tuberculosis, though she did not always admit it, and she worked, despite her illness, because work was, for her, a way of living, a way of forgetting, a way of being herself, even when her body was failing her.

She made Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945, a film based on Shaw’s play, in which she played Cleopatra opposite Claude Rains as Caesar, a film that was expensive, that was not a great success, and that showed, in a way, the limits of Leigh’s film career: she was a great actress, but she was not always given great films, and Hollywood, after Gone with the Wind, did not always know what to do with her, because she was not a conventional Hollywood star, she was a stage actress, a British actress, a woman who was, in many ways, too intelligent, too complex, too real, for the simple parts Hollywood offered her.

In the late 1940s, she returned to the stage, she played in plays in London, in Australia, in New Zealand, touring with Olivier, and she was, by all accounts, a great stage actress, a woman who could play Shakespeare, who could play modern drama, who could make an audience in a theatre feel as if they were in the same room as the character, not watching a film on a screen. It was on stage, in many ways, that she was happiest, because the stage was immediate, because the audience was there, because the work was live, and because she could, for a few hours, be someone else, completely, without a camera, without a director shouting cut, without the pressure of Hollywood.

A Streetcar Named Desire and Blanche DuBois

In 1949, Leigh played Blanche DuBois on stage in London, in Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, a play about a Southern woman who comes to live with her sister Stella in New Orleans, who invents a past, who is fragile, who is fading, who is destroyed by her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, a brutal, physical man played, in London, by Bonar Colleano, and, in the film, by Marlon Brando. Leigh’s Blanche was, by all accounts, a great performance, a performance that showed her gift for playing women who are beautiful, who are broken, who are trying to hold on to a world that has gone, and who, in the end, cannot.

In 1951, she played Blanche again, in the film version, directed by Elia Kazan, opposite Marlon Brando as Stanley, and Vivien Leigh won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for the performance. It is, for many people, an even greater performance than Scarlett, because it is quieter, sadder, more complex, a performance in which Leigh shows, in her face, in her voice, in her body, the gradual breakdown of a woman who has lost everything, who has invented a life, and who is, in the end, taken away to a mental hospital, saying, as she leaves, that she has always depended on the kindness of strangers. That line, like Scarlett’s tomorrow is another day, has become one of the most famous lines in film, and it is, in many ways, Leigh’s own epitaph, because she, too, depended on kindness, and she, too, was, in the end, taken away by illness.

Making Streetcar was hard for Leigh. She was ill, she was suffering from tuberculosis, she was suffering from mental illness, and the part of Blanche, a woman who is herself mentally ill, who is fragile, who is breaking down, was, in many ways, too close to Leigh’s own life, too close to her own suffering, for comfort. She gave a great performance, but it cost her, and after the film, her health got worse, her marriage to Olivier got worse, and her life, which had been difficult for years, became, in the 1950s, increasingly painful.

She continued to work, on stage and on screen, in the 1950s, in films such as The Deep Blue Sea in 1955, in which she played a woman in a loveless marriage, and in plays such as The Sleeping Prince, in which she appeared with Olivier, but her health was failing, her illness was returning, and her relationship with Olivier was breaking down. They divorced in 1960, after twenty years of marriage, a divorce that was, for both of them, sad, and that was, for Leigh, a loss of the man who had been, for so long, the centre of her life, her husband, her co-star, her partner, her friend.

The Later Years, Illness and a Final Performance

In the 1960s, Leigh lived alone, in London, in a flat in Eaton Square, she worked when she could, she played in The Taming of the Shrew, in Ivanov, in other plays, she made her last film, Ship of Fools, in 1965, in which she played a woman on a ship, a part that earned her praise, and that showed, even in her early fifties, that she was still a great actress, still capable of a performance that could move an audience. She was, by then, very ill with tuberculosis, she was coughing, she was weak, she was, at times, unable to work, but she kept going, because work was, for her, life, and because she did not know what else to do.

She had a relationship, in her later years, with John Merivale, an actor who cared for her, who lived with her, who helped her, and who was, in many ways, a kind, steady presence in a life that had been, for so long, turbulent. She was, in those years, a woman who was loved by her friends, who was respected by her fellow actors, who was remembered by audiences for Scarlett and for Blanche, and who was, in her private life, a woman who was trying, day by day, to live with an illness that would not go away.

She died on 8 July 1967 in London, at the age of fifty-three, from tuberculosis, after a period in which her health had grown worse, and after she had, in her last days, been cared for by Merivale and by friends. Her death was reported around the world, with tributes that spoke of Gone with the Wind, of Streetcar, of her two Oscars, of her beauty, of her talent, and of her suffering, and Olivier, who had divorced her seven years earlier, said, in a tribute, that she was, in his words, a great actress, and that the world had lost something irreplaceable. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered on a lake at her country home, Tickerage Mill, in Sussex, a quiet, private ending for a woman who had lived a very public life.

Her legacy is secure. Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois are two of the greatest female characters in film, and Leigh’s performances in those roles are still, today, the standard against which other performances are measured. She was a great stage actress as well as a great film actress, she was a woman who worked with the best directors, with the best actors, and who gave, in her best work, performances that were, in the truest sense, unforgettable. She is remembered, not only for her beauty, but for her talent, for her courage in playing difficult women, and for her honesty in living with an illness that, in her time, was not understood, and that, even today, is hard to talk about plainly.

My Take:

I think Vivien Leigh is the actress who makes me feel most protective, and I say that because her life was so hard, and her talent was so great, and the world, in many ways, took so much from her and gave her so little back in the way of understanding. She played Scarlett and Blanche, two women who are, in many ways, survivors, and she was, herself, a survivor, a woman who lived with mental illness and with tuberculosis, who worked when she was ill, who loved when she was ill, who kept going, and who died at fifty-three, too young, too soon, with much more work still in her. That is a sad story, and it is one that I do not want to turn into a simple tragedy, because Leigh was not only a tragic figure. She was a great actress, a funny woman, a clever woman, a woman who loved, who laughed, who worked, and who, in her best performances, gave the world something that no one else could give.

What I admire most about her is her courage in playing difficult women. Scarlett O’Hara is not a nice woman. She is selfish, she is manipulative, she marries men she does not love, she steals her sister’s boyfriend, she lets people die, and she survives. Many actresses would have softened Scarlett, would have made her nicer, would have made her more likeable, because they would have been afraid that audiences would not love a selfish woman. Leigh did not soften her. She played Scarlett as she was, as a woman who will do anything to live, and audiences loved her for it, not because she was nice, but because she was true. That is a brave choice, and it is a choice that many actors are afraid to make, because it risks the audience’s love. Leigh risked it, and she won, because audiences recognised, in Scarlett, a truth about survival, about what people do when they are desperate, and about how a woman can be both selfish and brave at the same time.

Blanche DuBois is an even braver choice, because Blanche is not only selfish, she is fragile, she is ill, she is inventing a past, she is lying, and she is, in the end, destroyed. To play Blanche is to play a woman who is breaking down, in front of an audience, and to do it without making her a joke, without making her a victim, without making her a monster, is one of the hardest things an actress can do. Leigh did it, on stage and on screen, and she did it so well that her performance is still, today, the one against which all other Blanches are measured. I think that is because Leigh understood Blanche, not only as an actress, but as a woman who knew what it was to be fragile, to be ill, to invent a past, to try to hold on to beauty when beauty is fading. That understanding is not something you can learn in acting school. It is something you learn by living, and Leigh had lived it.

I think about her illness a great deal, and I want to be careful about how I talk about it, because it is easy, too easy, to say that her illness made her a great actress, that her bipolar disorder gave her the intensity, that her tuberculosis gave her the fragility, and that is not fair, and it is not true. Her illness did not make her great. Her talent made her great, her hard work made her great, her intelligence made her great, and her illness made her life harder, made her work harder, made her relationships harder, and, in the end, killed her. To say that illness is a gift is to romanticise suffering, and suffering is not romantic. It is painful, it is frightening, and it is, for the person who lives with it, a daily struggle. Leigh struggled, daily, for years, and she still gave great performances, and that is the point: she was great in spite of her illness, not because of it.

Her marriage to Olivier is the part of her story I find most complicated, because it was, by all accounts, a great love, and it was also, by all accounts, a difficult marriage, a marriage that was, in the end, destroyed by illness, by work, by infidelity, by the pressure of being the most famous couple in Britain. Olivier loved her, he tried to help her, he stayed with her for twenty years, and he left her, in 1960, because he could not, in the end, live with her illness, with her moods, with her demands. I do not want to blame Olivier, and I do not want to blame Leigh. I want to say that mental illness is hard on a marriage, that it is hard on the person who is ill, and hard on the person who loves them, and that both people can be doing their best and still fail. That is a sad truth, and it is a truth that many families know, and it is a truth that deserves to be spoken plainly, without judgement, because judgement does not help anyone who is living with it.

I think about her daughter, Suzanne, a great deal, because Suzanne was a child when her mother became famous, a child who grew up with a mother who was often away, who was often ill, who was often the centre of attention, and who, in the end, lost her mother at fifty-three. Suzanne lived a quiet life, she did not become an actress, she did not seek fame, and she kept her mother’s memory in a private way, which is, I think, a dignified choice. I do not know what it was like to be Suzanne, but I imagine it was hard, to have a mother who was Scarlett O’Hara to the world and a complicated, ill, loving, difficult woman at home. That is a lot for a child to carry, and I hope that Suzanne, in her life, found peace with it, as Leigh herself, I hope, found peace in her last years, with John Merivale, with her friends, with her work.

Gone with the Wind is a film I have mixed feelings about, and I want to be honest about that, because the film is, in many ways, a beautiful, epic, romantic film, and it is also, in many ways, a film that presents a false, romantic view of the American South, of slavery, of the Civil War, a view that is, by modern standards, deeply problematic. Leigh’s performance as Scarlett is great, but the film around her is not innocent, and it is important to say so, because admiring Leigh does not mean defending everything about the film. I can love her performance and, at the same time, recognise that the story she is in is a story that leaves out the suffering of enslaved people, that makes the South look noble, and that is, in that sense, a lie. Leigh, who was British, who was playing an American, who was, in many ways, an outsider to that story, gave a performance that transcends the film’s politics, because she played Scarlett as a human being, not as a symbol, and that humanity is what lasts, even when the film’s view of history does not.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a play and a film I love without reservation, because it is honest about power, about men and women, about desire, about class, about a woman who is destroyed by a man who is, in many ways, a brute, and about a society that does not protect her. Leigh’s Blanche is, in that story, a victim, but she is also a person, a person with a past, with desires, with a need to be loved, and with a fragility that makes her both sympathetic and, at times, frustrating. That complexity is what makes the play great, and it is what makes Leigh’s performance great, because she does not simplify Blanche, she does not make her a saint or a sinner, she makes her a woman, and that is enough.

If I could show one Leigh performance to a person who had never seen her, I would show Streetcar, because it is shorter, because it is more modern, because it is, in many ways, more relevant today, about a woman who is not believed, about a man who uses his power to destroy her, about a sister who must choose between her husband and her sister. I would also show Gone with the Wind, because it is epic, because it is beautiful, because it is, for better and for worse, a part of film history that everyone should see, and because Leigh, in it, is unforgettable, from the first scene, when she is in a green dress made from curtains, to the last, when she says tomorrow is another day.

I think about her last film, Ship of Fools, and about her last stage performances, and I feel a sadness that she died so young, that she did not have more time, that she did not live to see how her work would be remembered, how Scarlett and Blanche would become, in the years after her death, even more famous, even more loved, even more studied. She died at fifty-three, an age when many actresses are just beginning their best work, and she left behind a body of work that is, in many ways, incomplete, a work that was cut short by illness, by death, by a life that was too hard for too long. That incompleteness is part of her story, and it is a sad part, but it is also, in a way, a reminder that a great artist does not need a long life to leave a great legacy. Leigh left two performances that will last as long as film lasts, and that is, in itself, a great legacy.

In the end, I think of Vivien Leigh not as a tragic figure, not as a sick woman, not as Scarlett or Blanche, but as a worker, a woman who worked hard, who loved hard, who suffered, and who gave, in her best work, performances that are still, today, among the greatest ever given. She was beautiful, she was talented, she was brave, she was flawed, she was human, and she deserves to be remembered as a human being, not as a legend, not as a myth, but as a woman who did great work and who lived a hard life, and who, in the end, left us with two women, Scarlett and Blanche, who will live long after we are gone.

I also think about Leigh’s work on stage, and about how it is, in many ways, forgotten today, because her films are so famous, and her stage work was, by its nature, live, and is gone, except in the memories of people who saw her, and in reviews, in photographs, in programmes. She played Cleopatra, she played Lady Macbeth, she played in plays by Shaw, by Coward, by Williams, and she was, by all accounts, a great stage actress, a woman who could hold a theatre, who could make an audience in the back row feel as if she was speaking to them alone. That stage work matters, because it shows that Leigh was not only a film star, not only Scarlett and Blanche, but a complete actress, a woman who could do anything, on stage or on screen, and who chose, in her life, to do both, even when it was hard, even when it meant travelling, even when it meant being away from home. I wish we had films of her stage work, and I am sad that we do not, because I think they would show us a Leigh we have never seen, a Leigh who was, in many ways, even greater on stage than on screen.

There is a final thought I want to leave about Leigh, and it is about beauty, because she was, by any measure, a beautiful woman, and beauty, in her life, was both a gift and a burden. It opened doors for her, it made her famous, it made audiences love her, and it also, at times, made people take her less seriously as an actress, made them think that she was only a pretty face, that she could not act, that her talent was only skin deep. Leigh proved, again and again, in Scarlett, in Blanche, on stage, that she was not only beautiful, but talented, intelligent, and brave, and that beauty, when it is combined with talent, is not a flaw, but a power, a power that she used, in her best work, to tell stories about women who were beautiful and who were also, underneath, fragile, strong, selfish, kind, and human. That is a lesson for anyone who is judged by their looks: that beauty does not have to be a limit, that it can be, in the right hands, a way to tell the truth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What two roles won Vivien Leigh her Academy Awards?

She won Best Actress for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind in 1939 and for Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951, two of the most famous female roles in film history, both Southern women who survive by very different means.

Where was Vivien Leigh born?

She was born Vivian Mary Hartley on 5 November 1913 in Darjeeling, India, where her father was a British officer, and she was sent to England at six to be educated at a convent school in Roehampton.

Who was Vivien Leigh married to?

She was first married to barrister Herbert Leigh Holman, with whom she had a daughter, Suzanne, and then, from 1940 to 1960, to actor Laurence Olivier, with whom she became the most famous acting couple in Britain.

What illness did Vivien Leigh suffer from?

She suffered for much of her adult life from bipolar disorder, then called manic depression, and from tuberculosis, a lung disease that weakened her, returned many times, and caused her death on 8 July 1967 in London at the age of fifty-three.

Did Vivien Leigh play Blanche DuBois on stage as well as on film?

Yes, she first played Blanche on stage in London in 1949, in Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, and then played her again in the 1951 film directed by Elia Kazan, opposite Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski.

What was Vivien Leigh’s last film?

Her last film was Ship of Fools, released in 1965, in which she played a woman travelling on a ship, a performance that was praised and showed she was still a great actress in her early fifties despite serious illness.

What is Vivien Leigh’s most famous line as Scarlett O’Hara?

As Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, she says, tomorrow is another day, a line that has become one of the most quoted in film, expressing Scarlett’s determination to survive no matter what she has lost.