Description

Of all the great actors of the 20th century none personifies acting royalty more than Laurence Olivier and some of this is simply due to the fact that he was actually knighted in 1947 along with a lengthy list of other honors that include being named a life peer in 1970 and admission to the Order of Merit in 1984 To speak of The Right Honourable Lord Laurence Olivier is not a figure of speech but rather a fact Of course in addition to the literal sense of the term there is undeniably a manner in which Laurence Olivier qualifies as acting royalty as it is not for nothing that Spencer Tracy once referred to Olivier as the greatest actor in the Englishspeaking world Bacall It is also important to note that Tracy refers to Olivier not as a film or theater actor specifically because much of Oliviers lofty standing derives from his ability to successfully navigate different mediums like stage film and television The breadth of mediums in which he worked the various roles he inhabited within them actor producer director and the formidable time span of his career lend Oliviers career a scope of perhaps unmatched magnitude