Every co-star Laurence Olivier hated with a passion: “Silly little amateur”
Sir Laurence Olivier will always be remembered as the greatest Shakespearean actor in British history, and a national treasure who took his thunderous talents to Hollywood in movies like Rebecca, Spartacus, Marathon Man, and King Lear.
However, it has also always been known that Olivier was a temperamental, arrogant man, and it often seemed likely he rarely met a co-star he didn’t despise.
Fascinatingly, Olivier’s history of being an equal opportunity hater goes all the way back to his days in the theatre. He dominated the British stage for the lion’s share of the 20th century along with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, but Olivier was self-important enough to believe he was the “top English actor” among the trio. He hated Gielgud’s musical versions of Shakespeare’s plays, once scoffing, “I’ve always despised Shakespeare sung. I don’t think it’s opera; I think it’s speech.”
By the time he made it to Hollywood with 1939’s Wuthering Heights, Olivier managed to make an enemy of his female lead at the very first time of asking. He was cast as the unruly Heathcliff in the Emily Brontë adaptation, while Merle Oberon, a rising star at MGM, was cast as Heathcliff’s obsession, Catherine Earnshaw. He had previously worked with Oberon on a British movie called The Divorce of Lady X, and decided on that shoot that she wasn’t at his level, even going so far as to dub her a “silly little amateur”.
Perhaps this is why he seemingly chose to be as difficult as possible on Wuthering Heights, being openly rude to Oberon and director William Wyler. She also claimed he purposely spat on her during intimate scenes, which he tried to play off as something that happens all the time when actors are in close proximity. Eventually, though, she blew up at him and snapped, “That was worse than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a badly played shot, if I may say so — and you spat again!”
At this, Olivier reportedly flew off the handle, screaming, “Why you amateur little bitch! What’s a little spit for Christ’s sake between actors? You bloody little idiot, how dare you speak to me…?” This caused Oberon to leave the set in tears, and when Wyler stepped in to force Olivier to make amends, he outright refused, claiming he wouldn’t be made a fool of.
Nearly 20 years later, while making 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl, Olivier clashed with Marilyn Monroe, who insisted on practising the method acting techniques she’d learned under Lee Strasberg. Olivier hated method acting, telling Monroe, “All you have to do is be sexy, dear Marilyn,” a sexist comment that infuriated her.
He later called her a “thoroughly ill-mannered and rude girl” and claimed, “I was never so glad to have a film over and done.”
Olivier didn’t just have issues with his female co-stars, though, and he left many a movie set with an abiding hatred of the men he worked with, too. While making Spartacus, for example, he and Charles Laughton couldn’t get along, despite Olivier publicly proclaiming Laughton a “genius”.
However, during the shoot, it was theorised that Olivier was jealous of Laughton’s upcoming stint as King Lear in Stratford’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre, so he supposedly drew the star a diagram to mark the areas on that hallowed stage where he shouldn’t stand, because the audience wouldn’t hear him. Laughton politely accepted the gesture, but when Olivier was out of earshot, he grumbled, “I’m sure those are the very areas from which you can be heard,” indicating he believed Olivier was trying to sabotage him.
In truth, it’s perhaps no wonder that several prominent Hollywood stars admitted to being wary of Olivier, with Sir Alec Guinness saying he was “unpleasant, possibly even vindictive,” while Orson Welles witheringly claimed the screen and stage icon was “very – I mean, seriously – stupid”.
