Olivia Mary de Havilland is a two-time Academy Award-winning actress. She is the sister of actress Joan Fontaine, also an Academy Award winner. Along with her sister Joan Fontaine and Luise Rainer, de Havilland is one of the last surviving female stars from Hollywood of the 1930s. She is also the last living lead from the Hollywood classic Gone with the Wind.
Early life
De Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan. Her mother, Lilian Augusta Ruse , was an actress known by her stage name Lilian Fontaine, and her father, Walter Augustus de Havilland , was a British patent attorney with a practice in Japan. Her parents married in 1914 and divorced when Olivia was three. Her younger sister is actress Joan Fontaine , from whom she has been estranged for many decades, not speaking at all since 1975. Her paternal cousin is Sir Geoffrey de Havilland.
The de Havilland family moved from Tokyo when she was two years old, settling in Saratoga, California. She attended school at Los Gatos High School and at the Notre Dame Convent Catholic girls' school in Belmont, California. An acting award at Los Gatos is named after her.
Career
in The Adventures of Robin Hood
De Havilland's career began co-starring with Joe E. Brown in Alibi Ike in 1935. She appeared as Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, her first stage production, at the Hollywood Bowl. The stage production was later turned into a 1935 movie. Although the stage cast was largely replaced with Warner Bros. contract players, she was hired to reprise her role as Hermia. After this, de Havilland played opposite Errol Flynn in such highly popular films as Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade , and as Maid Marian to Flynn's Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood . Overall, she starred opposite Flynn in eight films. She played Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance
