Olivia de Havilland

Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland (/də ˈhævɪlənd/; July 1, 1916 – July 26, 2020) was a British, American, and French actress. She appeared in 49 feature films throughout her career, with the major works of her cinematic career spanning from 1935 to 1988. Before her death in 2020 at the age of 104, she was the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner and was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Her younger sister, with whom she had a noted rivalry that was well documented in the media, was the Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine.

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 the first of her five Oscar nominations, the only one for Best Supporting Actress.

In the 1940s, De Havilland departed from ingénue roles and distinguished herself for performances in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949), receiving four Best Actress nominations and winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She was also successful in work on stage and television. From the 1950s, de Havilland lived in Paris and received honors such as the National Medal of the Arts, the Légion d'honneur, and the appointment to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the age of 101.

In addition to her film career, de Havilland continued her work in the theater, 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 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. Her sister and she remain the only siblings to have won major acting Academy Awards.