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Gone With the Wind actress Olivia de Havilland dies aged 104

Two-time Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Havilland, who starred in Gone with the Wind, has died aged 104.

Havilland, the sister of fellow Oscar winner Joan Fontaine, died peacefully of natural causes, New York-based publicist Lisa Goldberg said.

De Havilland was among the last of the top screen performers from the studio era and the last surviving lead from “Gone With the Wind”, an irony, she once noted, since the fragile, self-sacrificing Wilkes was the only major character to die in the film.

Olivia de Havilland poses during an Associated Press interview, in Paris, in 2016
Olivia de Havilland not long after celebrating her 100th birthday in 2016. Source: AAP

The 1939 epic, based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling Civil War novel and winner of 10 Academy Awards, is often ranked as Hollywood’s box office champion (adjusting for inflation), although it is now widely condemned for its glorified portrait of slavery and antebellum life.

During a career that spanned six decades, de Havilland also took on roles ranging from an unwed mother to a psychiatric inmate in “The Snake Pit”, a personal favourite.

The dark-haired De Havilland projected both a gentle, glowing warmth and a sense of resilience and mischief that made her uncommonly appealing, leading critic James Agee to confess he was “vulnerable to Olivia de Havilland in every part of my being except the ulnar nerve”.

She was Errol Flynn’s co-star in a series of dramas, Westerns and period pieces, most memorably as Maid Marian in “The Adventures of Robin Hood”.

Olivia de Havilland holds two Oscars as she returns home following the Academy Awards Presentations in 1950.
De Havilland with two Oscars in March 1950. Source: AAP

But De Havilland also was a prototype for an actress too beautiful for her own good, typecast in sweet and romantic roles while desiring greater challenges.

Her frustration finally led her to sue Warner Brothers in 1943 when the studio tried to keep her under contract after it had expired, claiming she owed six more months because she had been suspended for refusing roles.

Her friend, Bette Davis, was among those who had failed to get out of her contract under similar conditions in the 1930s, but de Havilland prevailed, with the California Court of Appeals ruling no studio could extend an agreement without the performer’s consent.

The decision is still unofficially called the “De Havilland law”.

Hattie McDaniel, Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh from  a scene in Gone with the Wind.
De Havilland (middle) with Hattie McDaniel (left) and Vivien Leigh in a scene from Gone with the Wind. Source: Warner Brothers

Oscars glory for de Havilland

De Havilland went on to earn her own Academy Award in 1946 for her performance in “To Each His Own”, a melodrama about out-of-wedlock birth.

A second Oscar came three years later for “The Heiress”, in which she portrayed a plain young homebody opposite Montgomery Clift and Sir Ralph Richardson in an adaptation of Henry James’ “Washington Square”.

In 2008, de Havilland received a National Medal of Arts and was awarded France’s Legion of Honour two years later.

She was also famous as the sister of Fontaine, with whom she had a troubled relationship.

In a 2016 interview, de Havilland referred to her late sister as a “dragon lady” and said her memories of Fontaine, who died in 2013, were “multi-faceted, varying from endearing to alienating”.

“On my part, it was always loving, but sometimes estranged and, in the later years, severed,” she said.

“Dragon Lady, as I eventually decided to call her, was a brilliant, multi-talented person, but with an astigmatism in her perception of people and events, which often caused her to react in an unfair and even injurious way.”

George W Bush, then US president, congratulates actress Olivia de Havilland after presenting her with the 2008 National Medals of Arts award during an event in the East Room at the White House in November 2008.
Former US president George Bush congratulates De Havilland after giving her the 2008 National Medals of Arts award during an event at the White House. Source: AAP

De Havilland was born in Tokyo on July 1, 1916, the daughter of a British patent attorney.

Her parents separated when she was 3, and her mother brought her and her younger sister Joan to Saratoga, California.

De Havilland’s own two marriages, to Marcus Goodrich and Pierre Galante, ended in divorce.

She had lived in Paris since 1953. In a rare interview with The Associated Press in her luxurious Paris residence in 2016, as she celebrated her 100th birthday, she said she moved to the City of Light “at the insistence” of Mr Galante, her late French former husband, and found no reason to return to the US.

She is survived by her daughter, Gisele Galante Chulack, son-in-law Andrew Chulack and her niece, Deborah Dozier Potter.

Ms Goldberg, the publicist, said funeral arrangements were private and memorial contributions should go to Paris’ American Cathedral.

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