Oscar Winner Olivia De Havilland Dies At 104 | TheRichest.com
Olivia de Havilland, who won two Academy Awards, died Sunday at 104 at her home in Paris. Known for Gone With the Wind, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Snake Pit and The Heiress, the actress was also a fierce advocate for actors’ rights.
The older sister of actress Joan Fontaine, who died in December 2013 at age 96, de Havilland was awarded two Best Actress Oscars for To Each His Own (1946), in which she played an unwed mother forced to surrender her baby, and The Heiress (1949), in which she falls for a handsome journeyman (Montgomery Clift), rebelling against her abusive father (Ralph Richardson).
In 1939, de Havilland was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Melanie in Gone With the Wind but lost to Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar. She was also nominated for Hold Back the Dawn (1941), in which she plays a shy schoolteacher courted by Charles Boyer, and The Snake Pit (1948), in which she is committed to a mental institution for reasons she can’t understand.
In 1943, she sued Warner Bros. to be freed from the studio after her seven-year contract expired. Actors were expected to honor their contracts for longer than the time stipulated if they weren’t working, which meant a seven-year contract could extend indefinitely. In 1945, the courts decided in favor of de Havilland, a ruling that set a precedent for all actors who would be limited to the calendar terms of their contracts.
Recently, at 101, she sued FX and Ryan Murphy Productions for how she was portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones in Feud: Bette and Joan. She eventually lost the case. A founding member of Screen Actors Guild, she is still celebrated for he activism at a time when she could have easily been blacklisted.
Born in Tokyo on July 1, 1916, her father, Walter, was a British patent attorney, while her mother, Lilian, was an aspiring actress. At three, she went to live with her mother and sister in California, where she developed her acting skills, eventually signing with producer and director Max Reinhardt.
She was married to screenwriter and novelist Marcus Goodrich from 1946 until their divorce in 1953. She then married French journalist Pierre Galante on 1955. She remained by his side until his death in 1979. She had a daughter, Gisele. She also had a life-long animosity towards her sister Joan that began in childhood.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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