Olivia de Havilland: Life and Legacy of a Hollywood Icon

Olivia “Livvie” Mary de Havilland, known simply as Olivia de Havilland, was a prominent English-American actress born in Japan and later based in the United States. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice: first in 1947 for To Each His Own (1946), and again in 1950 for The Heiress (1949). Olivia is remembered as one of the most beautiful actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

She is best known for her role as the charming Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in the classic epic Gone with the Wind (1939), a performance that earned her the first of five Oscar nominations, this time for Best Supporting Actress. Among the four lead actors in Gone with the Wind, she was the last surviving cast member.

Daughter of actress Lilian Fontaine, who had a brief theater career, Olivia was the elder sister of Joan Fontaine, another acclaimed actress who won an Oscar in 1942.

In the mid-1950s, Olivia left the United States to live in Paris, France, with her husband Pierre Galante. The couple had a daughter, Gisèle, in 1956. Since then, Olivia took on film roles selectively, choosing projects that interested her. She lived happily in Paris for many years. Gisèle followed her father’s footsteps and worked as a journalist for Paris Match, the magazine where Pierre Galante had worked for years.

In 2007, Olivia de Havilland was honored by former U.S. President George W. Bush, who awarded her a medal as an honorary prize. Olivia passed away on July 26, 2020, at the age of 110, in Paris, France.

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Carla Marinho Leal

Writer, traveler and above all, curious about many subjects. She has studied cinema since 2002 and is a Specialist in Cinematographic Studies from UNICAP. Founder of the blog Purviance and the website Cinemaclássico. She loves Charles Chaplin, Raj Kapoor and constantly browses films from all over the world.

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