Joan Plowright and Laurence Olivier had one of showbusiness's most enduring romances

Acting legend Joan Plowright died aged 95, and enjoyed a long-lasting romance with Laurence Olivier.

Joan Plowright and Laurence Olivier in 1960's The Entertainer. (PA)
Joan Plowright and Laurence Olivier in 1960's The Entertainer. (PA)

It seems only fitting that the love affair between two of Britain's greatest actors started in the theatre. It was in 1956 when the late Joan Plowright (who has died aged 95) first clocked eyes on the man who would become her second husband, Sir Laurence Olivier, when the acting legend visited the young actress' dressing room after a staging of the play The Country Wife.

Despite the age difference — Olivier was 51, Plowright 27 — the actor was smitten with the star. "I went to see The Country Wife," he wrote in his autobiography, Confessions Of An Actor, "and was entranced by the Margery Pinchwife of Miss Joan Plowright, whose very name was enough to make me think thoughts of love."

Olivier was still married to his second wife, Gone with the Wind actress Vivien Leigh, when he met Plowright (his first union to Jill Esmond had ended in 1940), though the relationship had long been on the rocks. Desperate to extricate himself from his crumbling marriage, he decided to take a role in John Osborne's play about an ageing music-hall performer named Billy Rice.

The Entertainer, however, wasn't an obvious pick for an actor of Olivier's training and experience. Osbourne was one of the so-termed 'angry young men', a group of politicised working class writers who in the 1950s were intent on blowing away the cobwebs of British theatre.

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Read more: Oscar-nominated actress Dame Joan Plowright dies aged 95

"More and more my impulses were to create a condition of detachment from my marriage," Olivier wrote, "and a sharp change in the direction of my career might help to form such a wedge."

Kino. Die Grossen Romanzen - Olivier & Leigh, 1930s, Film, Historienfilm, Paar, couple, Die Grossen Romanzen - Olivier & Leigh, 1930s, Film, Historienfilm, Paar, couple, Vivien Leigh und Laurence Olivier in FEUER UEBER ENGLAND, Fire over England, GB, 1937. (Photo by FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images)
Laurence Olivier with his second wife Vivien Leigh in 1937. (United Archives via Getty Images)

Certainly, Plowright represented this theatrical revolution more than the classically-trained Olivier, and was cast opposite him as Rice's granddaughter, Jean.

"It was into the maelstrom of this left-wing and radical rebellion," Plowright would recall in her memoir And That's Not All, "that Laurence Olivier, king of the Establishment, suddenly and unexpectedly propelled himself."

PA NEWS PHOTO 1957: Slightly tipsy - he's at the reminiscing stage - is Archie Rice, played by Sir Laurence Olivier. The attentive listener is his daughter, Jean, played by Joan Plowright (26).  They are pictured at the Palace theatre rehearsing for 'The Entertainer'.   (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)
Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright in rehearsals for 1957's production of The Entertainer. (PA Images via Getty Images)

Despite Plowright also being married to the actor Roger Gage, Olivier would flirt shamelessly with the young actress. Plowright was wary of the attention, however, believing she was simply the latest in a long line of women to be charmed by the suave and debonair actor. Yet it soon became obvious that this was something more. "There was a bond between us," Plowright recalled, "a strange feeling of kinship which had nothing to do with casual flirtation. We had fallen very much in love."

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Though Olivier believed his marriage with Leigh to be over, he was mindful of the actress' fragile mental health, and kept his latest affair secret. Likewise Plowright concealed her blossoming relationship with Olivier from her husband. A clandestine trip to New York in 1958 only cemented their feelings for one another.

"As we were away from the people in our lives from whom we were keeping secret and about whom we were feeling guilty, we could enjoy a precious time of happiness together," she reflected.

Eventually, it became clear to both Olivier and Plowright, this wasn't a mere fling and both would set in motion plans for separation from their respective partners. Olivier's divorce from Leigh and Plowright's from Gage were both finalised in 1960 and the couple would marry in March 1961. A son, Richard, was born later that year, followed by two daughters, Tamsin Agnes Margaret, in 1963, and Julie-Kate, in 1966.

Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright in 1970's Three Sisters. (PA)
Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright in 1970's Three Sisters. (PA)

Perhaps as an indication of the solidity of their marriage, Olivier and Plowright would collaborate many times in their careers. The 1963 film of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya featured both actors in key roles, as did the 1970 movie Three Sisters, again based on a Chekhov play, which Olivier co-directed. And in 1978, both starred in a TV adaptation of James Bridie's comic play Daphne Laureola and in a filmed version of Eduardo De Filippo's Saturday Sunday Monday. They were always creative partners as much as romantic ones.

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There was even a pleasing in-joke about the couple's relationship in the Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster Last Action Hero, which cast Plowright as a drama teacher, tutoring her pupils about Hamlet. "He is one of the first action heroes," her character says, before setting up the school's film projector. "What you are about to see now is a scene from the film by Laurence Olivier," adding, "Some of you may have seen him in the Polaroid commercial, or as Zeus in Clash of the Titans."

New York August 26th 1978. Laurence Olivier and wife Joan Plowright at Martin Beck Theatre (Photo by Tom Wargacki/WireImage)
Laurence Olivier and wife Joan Plowright in 1978. (Tom Wargacki/WireImage)

Though Olivier continued to work through the 1980s, his health had begun to deteriorate and he died of renal failure on 11 July 1989 aged 82, with Plowright by his side.

Both Olivier and Plowright were with other people at the time they met in that dressing room at the Royal Court in 1956, but their subsequent relationship outlasted every other marriage in their respective lives. And though the couple had their ups and downs, their love was, according to Plowright, imperishable.

"Our commitment was total," she told The Guardian in an interview in 2001. "I loved him so much I would have died for him but there were times when I didn't know how to live with him."

From left to right, actors Joan Plowright, Laurence Olivier, Rachel Kempson and Sir John Mills attend the memorial service for actor Sir Michael Redgrave at St Paul's Church in Covent Garden, London, 18th July 1985. Kempson is Redgrave's widow.  (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Joan Plowright and Laurence Olivier at the memorial service for actor Sir Michael Redgrave in 1985. (Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Though some, such as Olivier's son Tarquin, claimed that Vivien Leigh was the great love of the late actor's life, it's only in the proof of how long his and Joan Plowright's marriage lasted that's the real indicator.

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In total, they were together for over 30 years, bonded by not just a love of each other but a deep devotion to the theatre and the craft of acting. Theatreland would never see their like again.

Dame Joan Plowright - 1929-2025