Olivia de Havilland, the fragrant queen of the Hollywood costume drama, has died at the age of 104.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, her publicist said she had died from natural causes in Paris, where she lived.
While De Havilland won two best actress Oscars – for her roles in 1946’s The Each His Own and 1949’s The Heiress – she remains best remembered for her performance as stoical Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind.
De Havilland built her legacy — one of strong, beguiling characters in difficult circumstances — with her own hands. She rose to prominence in the 1930s as Errol Flynn’s imperiled lass in a series of swashbuckling adventure films like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Typically, she’d be bound up and carried away, only to be saved by the hero and ensnared once more in the ties of matrimony. But in her own life, de Havilland refused to wait for the calvary. Confident in her abilities and wary of being typecast as the damsel in distress, she waged a legal battle against Warner Bros. when the studio tried to extend her seven-year contract as a penalty for refusing roles. She eventually won, swooping in and saving herself in a landmark ruling that is still known today as the “de Havilland law.”
Entertainment / The Guardian
