Olivia De Havilland

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American actress, a sweet, soft-voiced movie star during Hollywood's golden era in the 1930s and 1940s. She arrived in Hollywood in 1934, a 17-year-old actress under contract to Warner Brothers Studio. Paired with the Hollywood idol, Errol Flynn, she soon went on to fame as the saintly Melanie Wilkes in the much anticipated film of 1939, "Gone With the Wind." Her film career in the '40s included Oscar winning performances in "To Each His Own," 1946 and "The Heiress" in 1949 co-starring Montgomery Clift. DeHavilland was born in Japan, the daughter of lawyer father who worked in Tokyo. She and her sister Joan Fontaine left Tokyo in 1919 with their mother who brought them to the U.S. DeHavilland was an excellent student but money was tight during the Great Depression. At 16, she won a scholarship to Mills College, but she turned the opportunity down in order to find work to support herself. With the advice of Max Reinhardt she signed a film studio contract. Her film debut was in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1935. In her first ten years in Hollywood, she made 30 films, many as the love interest of dazzling matinee star Errol Flynn, such as "Captain Blood," 1935, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," 1936, "The Adventures of Robin Hood,"1938, and "Dodge City" in 1939. She delivered an unforgettable performance in "Gone With the Wind." She received critical reviews in "Dark Mirror,"1946, "The Snake Pit,"1948 and was nominated for an Oscar for "Hold Back the Dawn." She appeared in the television mini-series, "Roots: The Next Generation" in 1979. In the '30s and '40s in Hollywood, DeHavilland lived a highly disciplined life under contract to Warner Brothers. She felt obligated to the moral clauses in her contract and the presence of studio censors was enough to keep the actress out of trouble. Though she was deeply attracted to her leading man, Errol Flynn, she refused to be tempted into an affair fearing the moral consequences. She fell in love with novelist Marcus Aureluis Goodrich and they married in August 1946. Goodrich was almost 19 years her senior and impressed DeHavilland with his intellectual brilliance. She gave birth to their son Benjamin in 1949 and the couple divorced in 1952. De Havilland had a weakness for smart, intelligent men and when she met French intellectual Pierre Gallante he was able to persuade the actress to leave Hollywood and move to Paris to be with him. Unhappy with the ever-shrinking film industry in the 1950s DeHavilland left her Hollywood career. She married Gallante in April 1955 and gave birth to their daughter Gisele the following year. Her marriage to Gallante ended in divorce in 1979. She and her adult daughter a close mother-daughter relationship and enjoy traveling the world together. They live together in a large townhouse off the Avenue Foch near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. She lived in Paris for 20 years, returning to Washington, DC in 1978. On whether it was better to marry in order not to live alone, she said, "Believe me, there is nothing worse in life than a bad marriage! Nothing lonelier than that. A woman can survive loneliness. Yes, even longing for a man. You can get over a man. It's difficult, but I've done it. Sometimes it's more important to remain unfulfilled in love and preserve your integrity, your independence, your personal honor." In 1998, "Gone With the Wind" was re-released in Los Angeles and across the nation's movie theaters. DeHavilland, 82, is one of the few living actors from the monumental film. Link to Wikipedia biography