About
Olivia Mary de Havilland, an American actress is best remembered for the lovely and gentle ingenues and the more-substantial roles she fought to secure. While attending school, de Havilland was chosen from the cast of a local California production of A Midsummer Night`s Dream to play Hermia in a 1935 Warner Brothers film version of that play.
She is best known for her portrayal of Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). She went on to deliver Academy Award-winning performances in To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949).
De Havilland was the recipient of numerous honours. She received the American National Medal of Arts in 2008 and two years later she was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in France. In 2017, shortly before her 101st birthday, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).
De Havilland died of natural causes in her sleep at her home in Paris on July 26 2020, at the age of 104.