Oscar-winning silver screen actress Olivia de Havilland has passed away at her home in Paris, aged 104.
One of the last survivors of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the older sister of Joan Fontaine, de Havilland began her career on stage in the 1930s, appearing as Hermia in Max Reinhardt’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a role she reprised for Reinhardt’s feature film adaptation, which was released by Warner Bros. in 1935.
De Havilland then starred alongside Errol Flynn in the Oscar-nominated Captain Blood (the two would appear eight times together in total, including The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Adventures of Robin Hood) and followed this up with a number of successes before starring in the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind, her supporting performance as Melanie Hamilton giving her her first Academy Award nomination (she lost out to co-star Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actress to win an Oscar).
In the years following Gone with the Wind, De Havilland received a further four Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, winning the Oscar twice for 1946’s To Each His Own and 1949’s The Heiress (for which she also received a Golden Globe), and missing out with 1941’s Hold Back the Dawn (the Oscar went to her sister Joan Fontaine for Suspicion) and 1948’s The Snake Pit.
After moving to Paris in the 1950s, de Havilland continued to make sporadic appearances both in film and television, including a Golden Globe-nominated role in 1952’s My Cousin Rachel and an Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe-winning supporting turn in 1986’s Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna.
