This is a comprehensive biography of stage and film star Laurence Olivier. The author was authorized by Olivier's estate so had access to papers, letters, family members, and friends. With just the book and films to judge him by (I never saw him on stage), I always found him to be stiff as a film actor. (His second wife Vivien Leigh was a much better film actor). He also seems to be somewhat stiff as a person. He seemed to have no real love for his first wife or son. His passionate affair with Vivien Leigh that did result in a 20 year marriage was marred by her battle with mental illness. While Leigh and Olivier were inseparable, as the mental ups and downs became more frequent, he pulled away instead of supporting her. Even Noel Coward felt that Olivier should have "turned sharply on Vivien years ago and given he a clip in the chops" (page 261) shows how sexist these men were. As usual, Olivier comes across as a self-centered, egotistical person. The book has a comprehensive list of his stage and film roles. There is a section on The Olivier Family which lists third wife, Joan Plowright, and the three children he had with Plowright, as well as information on his son, Tarquin, with first wife Jill Esmond, but nothing on Esmond and her fate. There is also a section where his contemporaries like John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft remember him. ( )

Famed and acclaimed British actor Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) was an actor to his core, a self-identification which guided him confidently along the path of his life's work. But it also meant that his true personality, underneath his talent for professional deception, was known by only a few. Given unprecedented access to the remnants of Olivier's life (his effects, his letters, and his family) to cut through the miasmus of previous biographies, Terry Coleman has crafted a great and moving opus on the life of an equivocating genius. ( )

Coleman manfully weeds out the fact from the fiction in the long & colourful life of one of the English stage's greatest actors. Even handed & fair but factual excellence over-rules entertainment value. ( )