Vivien Leigh: Biography, Illness, Relationships, Death

Some actresses become a role; Vivien Leigh became two of them. Before she turned 30 she had played Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois, performances that earned two Oscar nominations and one win — and that still define her name decades after her death. The same years brought tuberculosis, the end of her marriage to Laurence Olivier, and a private battle with mental illness that followed her to the end. This is the biography beneath the legend, dates and doubts included.

Full Name: Vivien Leigh ·
Born: November 5, 1913 ·
Died: July 8, 1967 ·
Height: 5 ft 3 in (160 cm) ·
Weight: Approx. 110 lbs (50 kg) ·
Oscar Wins: 1 (Best Actress, 1940)

Key Facts at a Glance

Seven facts sum up the public record; the pattern is how much of her private life those facts leave out.

The pattern: the more famous she became, the more the official record reads like two different lives — one triumphant, one medically fragile.

What disease did Vivien Leigh have?

Two conditions define the medical record: tuberculosis, which was certified as her cause of death, and bipolar disorder, which strained the marriages and friendships around her.

The first serious crisis is dated to the mid-1940s. Britannica Kids (student encyclopedia) says tuberculosis was diagnosed in 1944 in her left lung; Marie Claire UK (women’s lifestyle magazine) records a severe bout in 1945 and says she remained vulnerable to recurrence afterward.

What was Vivien Leigh’s cause of death?

• Tuberculosis was the certified cause of death; she died in London on July 8, 1967, aged 53
• That death was not a one-off relapse: the mid-1940s crisis was never fully behind her, and the final illness was a recurrence of the same disease

Britannica also notes that Leigh kept working through fragile health, moving between film sets and stage runs even while managing tuberculosis.

What were Vivien Leigh’s last words?

• Her reported last words: “My God, why has it taken so long?” — the line appears in accounts published after her death

If the account is accurate, those words ended a life that the press had narrated as a tragedy for two decades.

Why this matters: the 1967 death was not a sudden illness but the final act of a twenty-year medical battle — and every comeback, including her second Oscar nomination in 1951, happened against that background.

The pattern: each medical setback arrived just as her career reached a new peak — and she kept working through both.

Did Clark Gable love Vivien Leigh?

Short answer: there is no evidence of a romance, and plenty of evidence of a friendship that lasted far beyond the film. Gable was the biggest male star in Hollywood when Leigh arrived as a largely unknown British actress; what grew between them stayed professional — and warm.

The warmth shows up in what Gable chose to say later.

What did Clark Gable say about Vivien Leigh?

• “She was the best actress I ever worked with” — Gable’s assessment of Leigh, quoted in accounts of the making of Gone with the Wind

For a star who gave few interviews and fewer compliments, that sentence carried unusual weight. It is also the closest we have to an answer about his feelings: admiration, stated publicly.

Who did Vivien Leigh sleep with?

• Two marriages are public record: Leigh Holman (1932–1940) and Laurence Olivier (1940–1960) (Britannica’s fact page (reference listing))
• Biographers have documented affairs outside those marriages, the best known with actor Peter Finch
• Her later years were spent with actor Jack Merivale, whose relationship with Leigh began after the Olivier marriage had effectively ended (Marie Claire UK (women’s lifestyle magazine))

The implication: the Gable question may be better answered by public words than by rumor. The evidence we have is praise, not confession.

The catch: “love” in Hollywood is often a category error. What Gable gave her was respect; what she needed later was care.

Why did Laurence Olivier leave Vivien Leigh?

The marriage that defined her public life is usually dated 1940–1960. Britannica’s fact page (reference listing) lists it as 1940–1961 — a small discrepancy that shows how even basic dates need care.

What ended the marriage was not a loss of affection so much as an accumulation of crises. Marie Claire UK (women’s lifestyle magazine) describes her mental illness as bipolar disorder, with depressive and manic phases that made life at home unpredictable; accounts of the couple’s circle described the same illness eroding the partnership through the 1950s.

Did Laurence Olivier attend Vivien Leigh’s funeral?

• Yes — Olivier attended the funeral in London in July 1967, seven years after the divorce

His presence closed the public version of their story on a gentler note than the divorce had.

Who was the love of Vivien Leigh’s life?

• By the account of friends and biographers, Olivier was considered the love of her life
• Her final years were shared with Jack Merivale, who provided the stability the Olivier years had lacked

The trade-off: Olivier gave Leigh a partnership that lifted her into Hollywood’s highest tier, but the same partnership became the stage on which her illness was publicly judged. When it ended, she lost a husband and a professional anchor at once.

The pattern: the end of the marriage removed the public scrutiny of her illness but also the partnership that had anchored her rise.

How tall was Vivien Leigh and how much did she weigh?

The short answer: 5 ft 3 in (160 cm) tall, and roughly 110 lbs (50 kg) at her peak film weight.

• Height: 5 ft 3 in (160 cm) — the figure repeated across actor reference profiles
• Weight: approx. 110 lbs (50 kg) — the figure recorded for her 1930s–1940s peak

The contrast mattered on screen: at barely five foot three, she played Scarlett O’Hara, one of the most forceful parts in 20th-century cinema, and made a small frame look like focused intensity.

The pattern: her films keep asking her to be larger than life, while the record shows she was, physically, one of the smaller presences on set. That gap between size and impact was the essence of her casting.

Was Vivien Leigh nice in real life?

By the working reputation she left behind, yes: she was known to be kind and generous on set, with a professional discipline that costars and crews respected.

At home, the picture was more complicated. Marie Claire UK (women’s lifestyle magazine) describes her mental illness as bipolar disorder, with depressive and manic phases that made close relationships unpredictable.

The catch: the public got the warm professional, while the people closest to her got the illness. No amount of on-set goodwill could stop the mood cycles.

What happened to Vivien Leigh’s child?

Leigh had one child: Suzanne, born in 1933 during her marriage to Leigh Holman and known in most records as Suzanne Farrington. The mother-daughter relationship was strained, with the instability of Leigh’s adult life creating real distance between them.

Two related questions keep coming up from readers, and both have documented answers.

How much was Vivien Leigh worth when she died?

• Reported estimate: about $2 million at her death in 1967. The figure is an estimate, and press calculations vary.

The real inheritance question is not cash but continuity: her films and the archive kept her name active for new generations.

Was Vivien Leigh’s mother Indian?

• No — she was born in Darjeeling, India, but her parents were British. The India connection is geography, not ancestry

The rumor persists because every encyclopedia lists her birthplace as India, and an Indian birthplace was unusual enough for a British actress of her generation that the idea kept resurfacing.

The takeaway: the family story is less exotic than the headlines suggested, but the daughter’s story is more complicated than a single line in a biography.

Vivien Leigh’s Life, Year by Year

Nine dates trace the whole arc; the pattern is how often a career peak and a human cost landed in the same year.

What the dates hide is endurance: she was in treatment for TB by 1944 and still delivered the performance that earned a second Oscar nomination in 1951.

Confirmed Facts and What’s Still Unclear

The sources agree on the skeleton of the story and diverge on the details that shape its meaning. Here is the split.

The difference between the two columns is not sloppy research; it is the nature of biography. Dates get recorded; feelings and private finances do not.

In Their Own Words

Two voices frame the public memory of Leigh: her most famous costar and her own reported final words.

“She was the best actress I ever worked with.”

— Clark Gable, on acting opposite Leigh in Gone with the Wind

“My God, why has it taken so long?”

— Vivien Leigh’s reported last words, London, July 1967

The Gable line is widely repeated in film histories; the last-words account is reported rather than independently verified.

The gap between professional praise and a private death is the whole arc of her story.

The story of Vivien Leigh is usually told as a fall: beautiful star, painful end. The record tells a different arc. She performed with a diagnosis the public barely understood, survived a divorce that could have ended her career, and kept working into her final years. For anyone fresh to her films, the next step is simple: watch Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire back to back, then read one of the major biographies — because the woman who played both roles is more complicated than either performance.

Frequently asked questions

What the questions have in common: they all circle one tension — public achievement versus private cost.

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