And That's Not All

Joan Plowright, fresh from making a new film with Peter O'Toole, has, after years of saying no, finally written her memoirs. She's had quite a life, not least having been married for twenty years to Laurence Olivier. She feels enough time has elapsed for a no holds barred approach. They met in the mid-1950s when Olivier was still married to Gone With the Wind star Vivien Leigh. Joan was the daughter of a north country newspaper editor and his wife who was an amateur actor of note. One of her brothers, David, became the chief executive of Grenada TV. She went to drama school, worked at the Royal Court at the height of its Look Back in Anger celebrity, starred in plays by Arnold Wesker and John Osborne, and then Olivier came into her life. They started an affair - she had been married briefly to a young actor. Then Vivien Leigh, a manic depressive, suddenly consented to Olivier divorcing her. Her marriage to Olivier coincided with the lauch of two companies directed by Olivier, the Chichester Festival and the National, in which Joan appeared. They had three children, but she confesses that he was 'not the easiest man to be married to.'
But they stayed together and she nursed him through ten years of fighting illness, including cancer. At the core is the relationship with Olivier and the book includes their love letters. She also refutes the wilder claims that have been made questioning Olivier's sexuality in several unauthorised biographies She has always enjoyed writing as these feisty, poignant and funny memoirs show.