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Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them," said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.

One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsing?r), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).

There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows." The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.

In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.

More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).

Anita Pallenberg was a model and actress best known for her involvement with The Rolling Stones in the 1960s and 1970s. She was born in 1942 to Elfriede Paula Wiederhold, a German secretary, and Arnold Pallenberg, a descendant of a prominent family of furniture manufacturers from Cologne, Germany. She grew up in Rome, Italy, where her father owned a travel agency, and Germany, where she was sent to a boarding school at her father's request. After being expelled from school at 16, she lived in Munich, where she studied at an art school, hung out with the La Dolce Vita crowd in Rome, and eventually traveled to New York where she connected with Andy Warhol's Factory.

In 1965, Anita Pallenberg was working as a model all over Europe when she met The Rolling Stones backstage at a concert in Munich. She started a tumultuous relationship with guitarist Brian Jones that lasted until she left him for his bandmate Keith Richards in 1967. With Richards, she formed a relationship that lasted 12 years and produced three children. During her time with The Rolling Stones, Anita was considered to be a muse for the band and a huge influence on their style and music. She also became known as an actress in her own right in the late '60s and early '70s, working with directors such as Volker Schl?ndorff, who directed her debut A Degree of Murder (1967) and Roger Vadim in Barbarella (1968). The end of her relationship with Richards in the late 1970s, personal struggles with addiction, and the death of her youngest son shortly after his birth saw her drift from the public eye for many years.

In the 1990s, Anita Pallenberg returned to the spotlight. She got a degree in fashion design and took occasional small roles in film and on television. Her status as a fashion icon, inspiring designers and celebrities, remains to this day.

Anita Pallenberg died in 2017 due to complications from hepatitis C.

Liz Smith found fame as an actress at an age when most people are considering retirement. It was a long road to eventual stardom, during which she struggled to raise a family after a broken marriage. She became best known for her roles in The Vicar of Dibley (1994) and The Royle Family but her talents encompassed serious drama too. And while she made something of a name playing slightly dotty old ladies, the real Liz Smith was far removed from these on-screen personas. She was born Betty Gleadle in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. Her early life was not happy. Her mother died in childbirth when she was just two years old and her father abandoned her when he remarried. "My father was a bit of a sod, really. He just went off with loads of women and then married one who said he had to cut off completely from his prior life and that meant me." She started going to the local cinema with her grandfather when she was four and she quickly gained a fascination for acting.

By the age of nine, she was appearing in local dramatic productions, often playing the part of elderly ladies. World War Two thwarted her plans and she joined the WRNS because, as she later told the BBC's Desert Island Discs, she loved the cut of the naval uniform. She continued appearing in plays and entertainments while serving in the Royal Navy. She met her future husband Jack Thomas while she was stationed in India and the couple married at the end of the war. Her grandmother had left her enough money to buy a house in London. Smith later remembered that she had picked it at random from a magazine and bought it without crossing the threshold.

But what had been an idyllic marriage failed shortly after the family moved to Epping Forest in Essex and she was left to bring up her two children alone. With money tight, she worked in a number of jobs including delivering post and quality control in a plastic bag factory. But her love for acting remained and she began buying the theatrical magazine, The Stage, and sending her photograph to casting agents. Eventually she became part of a group studying method acting under a teacher who had come to the UK from America.

She performed at the Gate Theatre in west London and spent many years in repertory, as well as spells as an entertainer in Butlins holiday camps. In 1970, she was selling toys in London's Regent Street when she got a call from the director Mike Leigh to play the downtrodden mother in his film Bleak Moments. Leigh cast her again in Hard Labour, part of the BBC's Play for Today series, a role that allowed her to shine. She received critical acclaim as the middle-aged housewife who endures a life of domestic drudgery, constantly at the beck and call of her demanding husband and daughter.

It was the breakthrough she had sought for years and, as she later recalled: "I never went back to grotty jobs again." She was seldom off the screen over the next 20 years, with appearances in a number of TV programmes including Last of the Summer Wine, The Sweeney, The Duchess of Duke Street and The Gentle Touch. She was cast as Madame Balls in the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again, but her scenes were left on the cutting-room floor. However, she did appear in the role six years later in The Curse of the Pink Panther. In 1984 she received a Bafta for Best Supporting Actress when she played Maggie Smith's mother in the film A Private Function.

Two years later she appeared as Patricia Hodge's alcoholic mother in the BBC drama The Life and Loves Of A She Devil. It was a part, she said, that she really enjoyed as it gave her the chance to wear more glamorous outfits than her usual roles required. And she was able to dress up again for her next film appearance, this time in the role of Grace in Peter Greenaway's film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. She was still much in demand at the beginning of the 1990s, appearing in the sitcom 2point4 Children and in the series Lovejoy and Bottom.

In 1994 she became a household name with her portrayal of Letitia Cropley in the series The Vicar of Dibley (1994). The character was famous for her idiosyncratic recipes such as parsnip brownies and lard and fish paste pancakes, but was killed off in 1996. Two years later Liz Smith starred as Nana in The Royle Family, a sitcom that ran for nearly four years. She took the part again in 2006 in a special edition in which Nana died. Typically, she attributed her success to Caroline Aherne's scripts rather than her own talent.

"They were great roles," she later remembered. "I was so lucky that things did come my way then." Unlike some actors, she watched recordings of her own performances looking for ways in which she could improve her acting. She continued to appear in feature films, playing Grandma Georgina in Tim Burton's 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and she was the voice of Mrs Mulch in Wallace & Gromit -The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. In 2006 she published her autobiography Our Betty and moved into a retirement home in north London but continued acting. She appeared in the BBC's Lark Rise to Candleford, finally announcing her retirement in 2008 at the age of 87. It was a belief in her own talent that drove Liz Smith on when her life was at a low ebb. "All I wanted was a chance," she told the BBC. "It was wonderful when it did happen."

Smith died on Christmas Eve 2016. She was 95.

Alex started her career at a dancing school when she was 5 and as she got older she trained as an actress then at 16 she made a film in Hollywood but then turned down further tv and film offers in order to complete her schooling, Winning the role of Sharron Macready in in the television series The Champions was the high point of a short but highly successful career,

Ursula Howells was educated at St Paul's Girls' School in London, where her father Herbert Howells, a doyen of English church music taught music for 26 years. Following the death of her brother Michael from polio in 1935, her father composed his great choral masterpiece "Hymnus Paradisi".

She was evacuated to Scotland during the Second World War and made her stage debut in 1940 with Dundee rep. She made her London debut at the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage in 1945. Her broadcasting debut came in 1946 with Sweet Lavender and she made her screen debut in 1950, with Flesh and Blood (1951).

Although she continued to make West End appearances during the following thirty years, she remained in demand as a television and film actress. Her successes included Marriage a la Mode (1955), The Third Key (1956), Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and Girly (1970).

She made an impression as Frances Forsyte (Young Jo's first wife) in the BBC's 1967 television adaptation of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga (1967). She became a regular feature in television comedy and drama, ranging from Father, Dear Father (1968) and A Rather English Marriage (1998) to The Cazalets (2001).

Her television credits also included playing a psychopath Lettie Blacklock in Miss Marple: A Murder Is Announced (1985). She also appeared in Sins of the Fathers (1985) and Warriors (1991), Somewhere - Over the Rainbow? (1994), Vigilante (1995) and The Electric Vendetta (2001).

She instigated the "Herbert Howells Society" following her father's death in 1983 and became a standard bearer for the promotion of his work. She financially supported the recording of his compositions and did much to encourage the publishing and promotion of church music.

She was married twice. Following a brief first marriage to Davy Dodd in 1949, she remarried in 1968 to the theatre director Anthony Pelissier . She was widowed in 1988 and moved to Petworth in Sussex. Although she had no children of her own, she was a loving stepmother to her husband's son and three daughters who survived her.

Tony Steedman was born on 21 August 1927 in Warwickshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), Citizen Smith (1977) and Scrooged (1988). He was married to Judy Parfitt and Ann Steedman. He died on 4 February 2001 in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, England, UK.

June Thorburn was born on 8 June 1931 in Karachi, India. She was an actress, known for The Pickwick Papers (1952), Orders Are Orders (1954) and Fast and Loose (1954). She was married to Morten Smith-Petersen and Aldon Richard Bryse-Harvey. She died on 4 November 1967 in West Sussex, England, UK.

John Forgeham was born on 14 May 1941 in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Mean Machine (2001), The Italian Job (1969) and Kiss of the Dragon (2001). He was married to Arlene Garciano, Fiesta Mei Ling and Georgina Hale. He died on 10 March 2017 in Worthing, West Sussex, England, UK.

Anna Cropper was born on 13 May 1938 in Brierfield, Lancashire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Silas Marner (1964), The Odd Man (1960) and Cromwell (1970). She was married to William Roache. She died on 22 January 2007 in Tangmere, West Sussex, England, UK.

Ewen MacIntosh was born on 25 December 1973 in Merioneth, Wales, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for The Lobster (2015), Big Fat Gypsy Gangster (2011) and Little Britain (2003). He died on 19 February 2024 in East Preston, West Sussex, England, UK.

The daughter of a musical conductor, fair-haired, matronly Brenda de Banzie appeared in around 40 films. As the result of two outstanding performances she became an unexpected star when well into her middle age. Brenda first came to public notice as a sixteen year old chorus girl on the London stage in "Du Barry Was a Lady" in 1942. By that time, she had already been treading the boards in repertory for some seven years. The theatre was, first and foremost, her preferred medium. In the early 1950s, she had an excellent run of top-billed performances at the West End which included "Venus Observed" with Laurence Olivier, and "Murder Mistaken", in which she played a wealthy hotel owner whose husband is plotting to bump her off for her money. For this, she won the coveted Clarence Derwent Award as Best Supporting Actress.

Critical plaudits tempted her to try her luck on screen, so Brenda eventually made her celluloid debut in Anthony Bushell's murder mystery The Long Dark Hall (1951). Her performance -- as a rather vulgar and dowdy boarding house landlady -- drew good notices, including one from Bosley Crowther of The New York Times. In 1954, director David Lean cast Brenda in her defining role as Maggie Hobson, an ambitious spinster, opposite Charles Laughton and John Mills in Hobson's Choice (1954). As it turned out, she pretty much stole every scene from her illustrious co-stars. Rather surprisingly, a BAFTA eluded her. In 1958, Brenda landed the prize role of Phoebe Rice, the bitter, alcoholic wife of a second-rate music hall performer (played superbly by Olivier) in John Osborne's The Entertainer (1960). She recreated her performance for Broadway and for the film version in 1960 and received a Tony Award nomination. Sadly, despite such promise her stock did not improve thereafter and she was relegated for the remainder of her career to matronly character roles. Brenda passed away on the operating table during surgery for a non-malignant brain tumor in March 1981.

Dame Dorothy Tutin's esteemed company of peers included other remarkable dames, including Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Unlike these others, Dorothy had limited screen time over the years and would develop the respect but not the stardom afforded the other two outside the realm of the theatre. Dorothy was born in London on April 8, 1930, the daughter of John and Adie Evelyne (Fryers) Tutin. Educated at St. Catherine's, she studied for the stage at PARADA and RADA, making her debut performance as "Princess Margaret" in "The Thistle and the Rose" on September 6, 1949. In the early 1950s, she joined both the Bristol and London Old Vic companies where she rose in stature with secondary roles in "As You Like It", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "Henry V" and "Much Ado About Nothing". She later demonstrated her versatility outside the classics when she originated the role of "Sally Bowles" in "I Am a Camera" in 1954 and later played "Jean Rice" in "The Entertainer" in 1957.

Great promise was held for Dorothy after an auspicious film debut as "Cecily Cardew" in the classic Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest (1952). Despite sterling film portrayals of "Polly Peachum" opposite Laurence Olivier's "Macheath" in The Beggar's Opera (1953) and "Lucie Manette" in a remake of A Tale of Two Cities (1958) with Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy abruptly left the cinema to return to the comforts of a live stage. She continued to play all the illustrious Shakespearean femmes (Juliet, Desdemona, Rosalind, Ophelia, Portia, Cressida) during her excursions with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and Royal Shakespeare companies, and won the coveted Evening Standard award for her "Viola" in "Twelfth Night" in 1960. During this time, she returned to the role of "Polly Peachum", this time on stage, in 1963, and won acclaim for her "Queen Victoria" in "Portrait of a Queen" in 1965. She took the role to Broadway in 1968 and won a Tony nomination. In the 1970s, she appeared in everything from Harold Pinter plays to "Peter Pan".

Though her film and TV output was limited, the performances Dorothy gave during these sporadic occasions were nothing less than astonishing. Included among these triumphs has to be her "Anne Boleyn" opposite Keith Michell as one of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), and "Goneril" in Laurence Olivier's heralded adaptation of King Lear (1983). In a rare and rather bizarre moment on film, she top-lined one of Ken Russell's quirky biopics of the 1970s, the flop-turned-cult classic Savage Messiah (1972), in which she played a Polish noblewoman married to the much younger sculptor, "Henri Gaudier-Brzeska".

In later years, Dorothy enhanced several costumed TV movies with an always fascinating grande dame eloquence. An intriguing "Desiree Armfeldt" in "A Little Night Music" in 1989 and both an Evening Standard and Laurence Olivier Award winner for her superlative work in "A Month in the Country", Dorothy took her final curtain in a revival of "The Gin Game" opposite Joss Ackland in 1999. Honored with the title "Commander of the British Empire" in 1967, she was made a "Dame" for her services to the theatre in the 2000 New Year Honors.

Diagnosed with leukemia, Dame Dorothy died on August 6, 2001, at the Edward VII Hospital in London. She was survived by her actor husband (since 1963) Derek Waring and their two children, Amanda Waring and Nick Waring, both of whom are actors. Daughter Amanda, in fact, occasionally appeared as younger versions of her mother on TV during the 1990s and went on to gain a bit of fame for herself as a musical "Gigi". Her husband died in 2007.

Peter Madden was born on 9 August 1904 in Ipoh, Malaysia. He was an actor, known for From Russia with Love (1963), The Message (1976) and The Avengers (1961). He was married to Marion Snelling and Mary Jordan. He died on 24 February 1976 in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, England, UK.

John Clegg was born on 9 July 1934 in Murree, Punjab, British India. He was an actor, known for Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974) and You Rang, M'Lord? (1988). He was married to Mavis Pugh. He died on 2 August 2024 in Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK.

The daughter of an American Army Officer and a British mother, Virginia Anne Northrop spent her childhood travelling and growing up in whatever country her father happened to be posted. By the age of twenty, she settled in London and became a fashion model with Europe's leading agency, Models 1. Despite having little or no acting experience, her exquisite looks caught the ever-roving eye of scouts at the Rank Organisation. For the first three years, her career remained static. This changed when she was cast as a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), playing Olympe, the chess-playing companion of crime boss Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti). Her most fondly remembered -- and, sadly, final -- role was that of the ethereal silent assassin Vulnavia, devotedly serving The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) (Vincent Price). By 1974, Virginia had left the film world behind and wed the industrialist Gordon White (1923-1996), a former governor of the British Film Institute and chairman of the noted corporate raider Hanson plc. She became 'Lady Virginia' upon her husband's elevation to knighthood in 1979. The marriage lasted until 1991, White subsequently marrying a younger model (literally), forty years his junior. Virginia died prematurely of cancer in 2004 at the age of just 58.

Born in Cape Town, Union of South Africa in 1934, Ronald Harwood moved to London in 1951 to pursue a career in the theatre. After attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he joined the Shakespeare Company of Sir Donald Wolfit, one of the last 'actor-manager' of Great-Britain. From 1953 to 1958, Harwood became the personal dresser of Sir Donald. He would later draw from this experience in his play 'The Dresser' and write a biography 'Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His life and work in the Unfashionable Theatre'.

In 1960, he started a new career as a writer and would prove to be quite prolific, penning plays, novels and non-fiction books. He also worked often as a screenwriter but he seldom wrote original material directly for the screen, rather acting as an adapter sometimes of his own work.

One of the recurring themes in Harwood's work is his fascination for the stage, its artists and artisans as displayed in the aforementioned 'The Dresser', his plays 'After the Lions' (about Sarah Bernard) ,'Another time' (about a gifted piano player), 'Quartet' (about aging opera singers) and his non-fiction book 'All the world's a stage', a general history of theater. Harwood also has a strong interest in the WWII period, as highlighted by the films 'Operation daybreak', 'The Statement', 'The Pianist', and his play turned to film 'Taking sides'. Based on true stories, the two last films feature once again musicians as their main characters.

Made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1974 and Commander of the British Empire in 1999, Harwood was president of the international PEN Club from 1993 to 1997 after presiding the British section during the four previous years.

He could have been described as the "British Vincent Price". This distinguished actor was probably best known for his voice work. His low, resonant and mellifluous tones were employed to chill and excite for at least half a century. His most famous radio role was as "The Man In Black", back in the late 1940s, but he was making radio appearances as late as 1980 in "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy", and undoubtedly later, and was in the BBC Television Shakespeare in the year of his death, at 77.

Daphne Anderson was born on 27 April 1922 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Beggar's Opera (1953), Gideon C.I.D. (1964) and Hobson's Choice (1954). She was married to Lionel William Carter. She died on 15 January 2013 in Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK.

Twice BAFTA award-winning English satirist, writer and director, the son of chemist shopkeeper Horace Bird and his wife, Dorothy (née Haubitz). Born in Bulwell, Nottingham, Bird was a graduate of the Cambridge Footlights troupe. He was best known for his lengthy association with fellow Cambridge alumnus John Fortune, with whom he appeared in the trailblazing BBC satire That Was the Week That Was (1962), in addition to contributing scripts. His greatest success came later as support for Rory Bremner in the long-running improvisational political sketch comedy Bremner, Bird and Fortune (1997). Bird was particularly noted for his lampooning of political leaders, such as Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Other prominent roles saw him as a private detective in 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia (1968), a university vice-chancellor in A Very Peculiar Practice (1986), a feckless civil servant in If It Moves, File It (1970), pompous barrister John Fuller-Carp in Chambers (2000) and Professor Peter Plum in season 4 of the game show Cluedo (1990). He also made guest appearances in episodes of popular TV shows like Armchair Thriller (1978), Yes, Prime Minister (1986), One Foot in the Grave (1990), Jonathan Creek (1997) and Midsomer Murders (1997). Bird admitted to drug and alcohol dependency at some point in the mid- to late 70s, which for some time seriously affected both his physical and mental health.

Bird was married and divorced from Ann Stockdale, the daughter of a US ambassador to Ireland, and to television presenter Bridget Simpson. His third wife, concert pianist Libby Crandon, predeceased him in 2012.

Ronald Hines was born on 20 June 1929 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Deep Concern (1979), This Year Next Year (1977) and We'll Meet Again (1982). He died on 28 March 2017 in Midhurst, West Sussex, England, UK.

Marion Mathie was born on 6 February 1925 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Lolita (1962), An Honourable Murder (1960) and Department S (1969). She was married to John Humphry. She died on 20 January 2012 in Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK.

John Bentley was born on 2 December 1916 in Sparkhill, Birmingham, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Calling Paul Temple (1948), Salute the Toff (1951) and Bombay Waterfront (1952). He was married to Joyce ? and Patricia Smith. He died on 13 August 2009 in Petworth, West Sussex, England, UK.

Michael Trubshawe was born on 7 December 1905 in Chichester, Sussex, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Pink Panther (1963) and Brandy for the Parson (1952). He was married to Cecilia Tower and Margaret Louise McDougall. He died on 21 March 1985 in West Sussex, England, UK.

Bob Anderson was born on 15 September 1922 in Gosport, Hampshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983), The Mask of Zorro (1998) and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). He was married to Pearl Anderson. He died on 1 January 2012 in West Sussex, England, UK.

Mavis Pugh was born on 25 June 1914 in Croydon, Surrey, England, UK. She was an actress, known for You Rang, M'Lord? (1988), Fawlty Towers (1975) and Are You Being Served? (1972). She was married to John Clegg. She died on 6 December 2006 in Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK.