Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Wilkes in the beloved film Gone With the Wind, turned 102 on Sunday, July 1. Acting alongside Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, Olivia is the last surviving principal cast member of the classic movie.
"So how do I feel about older age?" the actress mused in a 2015 interview with Entertainment Weekly. "Crazy about it! Wouldn’t trade it for anything!"
While Olivia is best known for playing Melanie, she has earned two best actress Academy Awards for her work in To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949). She is also seen as a pioneer in the acting community for winning a legal battle over Warner Brothers, forcing them to release her early from their seven-year contract. The 1945 ruling made an enormous impact on Hollywood, giving actors the freedom to pick roles and shape their own careers. "I was very proud of that decision, for it corrected a serious abuse of the contract system ... No one thought I would win, but I did," she once said about the case.
The award-winning actress was married twice, once to author Marcus Goodrich and then to journalist Pierre Galante (she divorced the latter in 1979). She had a daughter, Giselle, with Galente and a son, Benjamin, with Goodrich, but her son passed in 1992 from Hodgkin's disease.
Olivia's sister was the late actress Joan Fontaine, and the two had a much buzzed-about feud. Fun fact: They're the only sisters in Academy Award history to both have best actress trophies.
In a recent Vanity Fair article, she reminisced on her trail-blazing career, and praised Gone with the Wind, the film that made her a household name in Hollywood's golden era.
I didn't identify with Melanie when I first read the book. But when I read Sidney Howard's wonderful script, Melanie seemed like a totally different character...I liked her, I admired her, I loved her!"
June 30 marks 82 years since the classic book Gone with the Wind was published.
