Laurence Olivier

Sir Laurence Olivier is widely considered the greatest English-speaking actor of the 20th century, known for Hamlet (1948, two Oscars), Richard III (1955), Marathon Man (1976), and dozens of stage and screen triumphs. He was married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Claims of his bisexuality rest most substantially on a 1937 affair with actor Henry Ainley, documented by his official biographer Terry Coleman; a widely repeated claim of a decade-long romantic relationship with Danny Kaye in the 1950s has been directly denied by Coleman, who found no evidence for it in Olivier's archives, and by both Kaye's final partner and Olivier's widow, Joan Plowright. Whatever the truth of the Kaye rumor, Olivier's bisexuality has been treated as credible by multiple biographers, though he never addressed it publicly himself.