IT all turned on a pin. The scene was a news conference on Feb. 9, 1956, and about 150 ''photographers, newsmen and news-hens in Manhattan's sedate Plaza Hotel were scrambling to worm nearer to their common goal,'' in Time magazine's words. Then Marilyn Monroe's dress strap broke. One news-hen, Judith Crist, The New York Herald Tribune's film...
LONDON -- A funny thing has happened imperceptibly yet unmistakably to the British theater of late: an entire generation of stage actor has pretty well passed from view. By that, I don't mean the swathe of actor-knights (and, on the distaff side, dames) who were already making their theatrical farewells when I first moved to London a...

LONDON TOWARD the end of the new film version of ''Sleuth,'' a cellphone suddenly rings. The sound is as jarring as gunfire, and it deepens the tension in a scene between Milo (Jude Law), an out-of-work-actor who is not as dumb as he looks, and Andrew (Michael Caine), a famous thriller writer with a cruel streak. The caller is Milo's lover, Maggie,...
Laurence Kerr Olivier (22. maj 1907 - 11. juli 1989) var en engelsk oscar-belønnet skuespiller, instruktør og producer.
Mange teater- og filmkritikere anså ham for at være den største skuespiller i den 20. århundrede , og han var Englands førende Shakespeare-skuespiller og -instruktør. Han fik sit Hollywood-gennembrud som den mørke, romantiske helt i Stormfulde højder (1939) og Rebecca (1940). Han var en meget produktiv perfektionist, der i løbet af sin karriere spillede mange forskelligartede roller både på teatret og på film, fra Shakespeares Othello (1966) til nazistisk tandlæge i Maraton-manden (Marathon Man, 1976). Han medvirkede i næsten 60 film, og på teatret nåede han at spille mere end 120 roller, heriblandt Shakespeares Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello og Tjekhovs Onkel Vanja. Han var gift med skuespilleren Vivien Leigh fra 1940 til 1960. Fold ud