Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland Trivia

Her mother named her Olivia after William Shakespeare’s romantic heroine in “Twelfth Night.”

Livvie is one of her nicknames.

Olivia de Havilland turned down the role of Blanche Dubois from A Street Car Named Desire (1951) saying “A lady just doesn’t say or do these things on the screen.” Well, Vivien Leigh ala Scarlett O’hara does and wins Oscar 2 for it.

She and her sister Joan Fontaine are the first sisters to win Oscars and the first to both be nominated for an Oscar the same year.

She is currently estranged from her younger sister, Academy Award winning actress Joan Fontaine.

She is the only surviving star who received top-billing in Gone With The Wind.

A street in Mexico City is named after her. “Dulce Olivia” is Spanish for “sweet olivia” and was the name given to a nameless road in Coyoacan Town by renowned Mexican actor and directo Emilio Fernandez.

The role of Lisolette Mueller in The Towering Inferno (1974) was originally offered to Olivia de Havilland and eventually played by Jennifer Jones.

When she was 9 she made a will which stated: “I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, since she has none.”

She was a close friend of Ronald Reagan during their times in Hollywood. Both were anti-communist members of the Hollywood Democratic Committee.

Olivia de Havilland is the aunt of Debbie Dozier.

She is mentioned in the book “Die Memoiren des Rodriguez Faszanatas” by Helge Schneider.

An acting award is named after Olivia at her high school Los Gatos in California.

She has confessed of her big crush on 8 time co-star Errol Flynn.

She holds the record for the most people thanked in an Oscar speech (27) when accepting her award for Best Actress in 1946 for To Each His Own.

In 1965, Olivia became the first female president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

This fiesty star took Warner Brothers Studio to court in the 40’s and won! In what has now become known as “the de havilland decision,” the court ruling stopped Warner Brothers from adding suspension periods to actors’ contracts therefore giving more freedom to the actors of Hollywood.