Vivien Leigh, Born in Darjeeling on November 5, 1913, Won Two Oscars for Two Unforgettable Women

Film still: Selznick International Pictures, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Vivien Leigh was born in Darjeeling, India, on November 5, 1913, and she would have been 113 this month. Many people do not know she was born there. She trained in London and became a stage and screen actress in Britain before moving into Hollywood.

Photo: Fawcett Publications, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Her big moment was Gone with the Wind in 1939. Casting Scarlett O'Hara was famously a long and public search, and Leigh won it and later the Academy Award for Best Actress. She is fierce, vain, funny and wounded all in one performance.

Poster: MGM, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

She won a second Best Actress Oscar for playing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, released in 1951, a performance I find difficult to watch because it is so raw. She had played the role on the London stage first, directed by Laurence Olivier, whom she married in 1940. They divorced in 1960.

Image: Bill Gold, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Her career was limited by illness, as she lived with bipolar disorder and later tuberculosis, and she made fewer films than she might have. She died on July 8, 1967.

Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Which of the two roles do you think is her best? I keep changing my answer, but Blanche stays with me longer.