EXCLUSIVE: Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh — Radar Reveals What REALLY Tore Apart Iconic Hollywood Couple
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's troubled marriage unraveled behind Hollywood glamour.
June 20 2026, Published 10:30 a.m. ET
When Vivien Leigh first saw Laurence Olivier strutting his hour upon the London stage in the mid-1930s, the 22-year-old beauty told a friend, "That's the man I'm going to marry."
The two soon costarred in the film Fire Over England, and their burning offscreen passion couldn't be denied.
"If we loved each other only with our bodies," Olivier wrote in one steamy letter to Leigh in the late '30s, "I suppose it would be alright. I love you with much more than that ... with a special kind of soul."
Hollywood's Great Romance Turned Turbulent
Kendra Bean said Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier remained one of Hollywood's great romances despite their 1960 divorce.
Leigh and Olivier couldn't resist each other, and both left their respective spouses and married in 1940. "Vivien was the great passion of his life and he was the love of hers," Kendra Bean, author of Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait, tells Closer, "but their time together was tempestuous."
Plagued by infidelity and Vivien's health issues, they divorced in 1960. Still, said Bean, "They'll forever be considered one of the great romances of the Golden Hollywood Age."
Initially, the couple seemed perfectly suited. They both rose to screen stardom in 1939, she as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind and he as Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff. "Vivien found him a dashing romantic and she appealed to his fantasy side," Darwin Porter, author of the biography Damn You, Scarlett O'Hara, tells Closer. "Plus, he really shaped her as an actress."
Beyond physical attraction, their connection through work held them together. "Both of them put their careers first," said Bean. "Vivien had a point of view that if a marriage is to endure, it's built on something more solid [than sex]," said Porter. "In their case it's built on the films."
Cooling Fire
Leigh's miscarriage during filming of 'Caesar and Cleopatra' reportedly deepened the struggles in her marriage to Olivier.
Eventually, both began to stray. And Leigh's health took a toll on the marriage. She had a miscarriage on the set of 1945's Caesar and Cleopatra, throwing her into a depression.
Leigh had struggled for several years with what is now known as bipolar disorder, but it got worse. Laurence's son from his first marriage, Tarquin Olivier, has said: "She was quite mad on a number of occasions. It was awful but we loved her and did what we could. There was no treatment."
In 1960, Laurence filed for divorce. He married actress Joan Plowright and Leigh had a relationship with actor Jack Merivale, who cared for her until the end. But, Porter revealed: "Merivale told me that Larry came by frequently to check up on her," adding, "They never spoke ill of each other [after the split]."
Their Love Endured Until Death
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Darwin Porter said Olivier continued checking on Leigh after their split while she was with Jack Merivale.
Their love endured.
Leigh died from a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1967 at 53. "Larry was her great affair," Porter, who met the actress, told RadarOnline.com. "She once said, 'Our love affair will endure for all eternity.'"
And though Laurence went on to have three children with Plowright and lived to 82, before his death in 1989, he reportedly said to a friend of Leigh: "This was love. This was the real thing."
