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What prompted Vivien Leigh’s dark journey into madness?

Did her many miscarriages so unhinge the beautiful actress that she ended up a sex-crazed harridan, screaming obscenities at those she loved?

7 September 2024

9:00 AM

7 September 2024

9:00 AM

Where Madness Lies: The Double Life of Vivien Leigh Lyndsy Spence

History Press, pp.256, 22

‘Vivien was barking mad from the word go,’ Laurence Olivier reflected in later life, and Lyndsy Spence’s biography would fully concur with the summing-up. At best, the actress was ‘suspended in a dream world’, unable to separate herself from the classic characters she played – Scarlett O’Hara, with her dark hair and flashing eyes, or Blanche DuBois (‘she is a tragic figure and I understand her’).

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