How much was Olivia de Havilland worth?
| Net Worth: | $50 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actress |
| Date of Birth: | July 1, 1916 |
| Country: | Japan-born British-American |
| Height: | 1.6 m |
About Olivia de Havilland
British-American actress Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland (July 1, 1916 – July 26, 2020) had a reputed net worth of $50 million. One of the greatest actors of the classic age, Olivia de Havilland was known for her quiet beauty, compassion, and inner power. She played the ideal Melanie in Gone with the Wind, and she is still alive today. She is also one of the last living representatives of the golden age of Hollywood. Her sweet voice and refined demeanor made her the ideal Melanie.
Earlier Years
On July 1, 1916, Olivia Mary de Havilland was born to British parents in Tokyo, Japan. Her father, Walter Augustus de Havilland, was a patent attorney, and her mother, Lillian Fontaine, was an actress. The actress Joan Fontaine, De Havilland’s younger sister, is also a famous actress. When Olivis was two years old, the family relocated to Saratoga, California.
Career Start-Up
After high school, De Havilland started to take an interest in acting. She performed as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Mills College in Oakland, where Max Reinhardt, a German theater entrepreneur, made the discovery. She was used by Reinhardt as Hermia for his theatrical production and later for his Warner Brothers film adaptation. She was instantly given a seven-year contract by Warners.
De Havilland continued on her journey and was frequently paired with Warner’s reigning leading man, Errol Flynn, as her co-star. Together, they produced eight movies, including The Charge of the Light Brigade (1944), Captain Blood (1935), and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1937). (1936).
Once Upon a Time
According to legend, George Cukor requested Fontaine to perform a test for Gone with the Wind. She declined and suggested her sister when she realized Melanie, not Scarlett, was playing the part. In 1939, De Havilland was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and received the role. The young actress, who was typecast as the “sweet young thing” in parts that did not test her acting talents, found the role to be a velvet trap.
De Havilland was suspended as a result of declining many of the screenplays the studio presented. Due to the time she spent being suspended, six months were added to her contract when it expired.
Due to the extra time, Bette Davis had already sought to sue but had been unsuccessful. De Havilland took up the argument with support from the Screen Actors Guild and prevailed, resulting in a significant decision that is today referred to as the De Havilland Law. Hollywood owes Olivia a tremendous deal, according to Joan Fontaine, while Bette Davis praised Olivia in a letter.
Naturally, Warner Brothers had no further plans for her.
In The Dark Mirror, where she played twins, To Each His Own, where she portrayed a young woman who aged, and The Heiress, which was based on a play about a homely girl unloved by her father who falls for a ne’er-do-well, De Havilland went to Paramount and signed a three-picture agreement (Montgomery Clift). De Havilland received Best Actress Academy Awards for To Each His Own (1947) and The Heiress (1950).
De Havilland made her acting debut in The Snake Pit in 1948, one of the earliest depictions of mental illness and state mental facilities. She received another Academy Award nomination.
She deliberately allowed her career to fade in the 1950s. Blanche’s part in A Streetcar Named Desire was turned down by her. Some of the script’s components disturbed her, and when the Hollywood Production Code crumbled over time, she grew to detest even more of the screenplays she was given. She only produced a small number of movies in the 1950s, including the British film Libel (1959) starring Dirk Bogarde and My Cousin Rachel (1952), That Lady (1955), Not as a Stranger (1955), The Ambassador’s Daughter (1956), and The Proud Rebel (1958).
She only starred in three films in the 1960s: Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1966), Lady in a Cage (1964), and A Light in the Piazza (1962). (1964). In Charlotte, Joan Crawford was slated to perform opposite Bette Davis. Vivien Leigh was offered the part when Crawford had to be replaced. “Sorry, no thanks. At six in the morning, Joan Crawford’s face is just about bearable, but Bette Davis is not “stated the actress. De Havilland, a friend of Davis, answered the phone and agreed to play the part.
She began acting in television in the 1960s and kept doing so into the late 1980s. For her performance as Dowager Empress Maria in the 1986 miniseries Anastasia: the Mystery of Anna, she received both an Emmy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award. In 2008, she received the National Medal of Arts from the United States.
Private life
De Havilland, who was Errol Flynn’s eight-time co-star, described meeting “a young Tasmanian,” in a sad interview from 2008. She declined Flynn’s marriage proposal because he was already married. They never had a romantic relationship. When she ran into him in Hollywood several years later, he had lost so much of his identity that her heart bled.
De Havilland wed author Marcus Goodrich in 1946; their union ended in divorce in 1953. Their son Benjamin was born to her in 1949; he passed away from Hodgkin’s cancer in 1991.
De Havilland wed journalist Pierre Galante in 1955. Giselle, their 1956-born daughter, is a journalist as well. Despite getting divorced from Galante in 1979, she remained friends with him and took care of him as he battled lung cancer.
The majority of the people De Havilland cared about have passed away, including her first husband and friends Bette Davis, Gloria Stuart, Charlton Heston, Errol Flynn, and others. She has stated that she is not opposed to working again but has not been able to find the position she is looking for. She resides in France with her daughter.
It’s unclear how she and Joan Fontaine’s sister are related. Enemies or friends? When Fontaine (nominated for Hold Back the Dawn) won the Academy Award for Suspicion in 1942, she disregarded de Havilland’s attempt to congratulate her. Later, when de Havilland had won, she allegedly did so because Fontaine had made fun of her husband and walked past her sister’s outstretched hand. When Fontaine was declined an invitation to their mother’s funeral in 1975, they ceased communicating. However, Fontaine asserts that the entire dispute was a PR gimmick.
Summing-Up
Olivia De Havilland played many different characters, but she will always be most known for her role as the kind Melanie in Gone with the Wind. She has been designated a Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur. She is a part of the Hollywood history and a national treasure in both this country and France. Unless one watches her films, her grace, beauty, and class are characteristics from another era that are rarely seen today.
De Havilland passed away peacefully in her sleep at her Parisian home on July 26, 2020, from natural causes. Olivia De Havilland’s net worth was $50 million at the time of her passing.
Up to her passing in July 2020, she was the oldest living and first-ever surviving Academy Award winner. Age-wise, she was 104.
