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Close to the bone

He produced, directed and played the king in the film of “Henry V”, which is the finest example of that genre. “I’ve played 200 characters in my life and I know them all better than I know myself. I don’t know who I am,” he said. Kenneth Tynan remarked that he would be whatever you wanted him to be.

At the end of the second world war Olivier ran brilliant seasons at the Old Vic with Sir Ralph Richardson. He was the first director of Britain’s National Theatre (NT), and it bore the stamp of his personality in every facet of its being, down to the quality of the lavatory paper, says Mr Ziegler. A control freak, Olivier told the actress Joan Plowright, his third wife, that unless he directed her, he forbade her to take a part at the NT offered by Sir Peter Hall, his successor, whom he had come to hate. She ignored him. He threatened to divorce her and suggested marriage to Sarah Miles, one of his mistresses. Mr Ziegler records that Olivier felt isolated in the heart of his own family. No surprise there.

Colleagues who worked with him admired him extravagantly, without always liking him. To William Gaskill, an associate director at the NT, he was “a sod”. This was partly because Gaskill wanted to adopt a house style modelled on Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, which Olivier resisted resolutely: “You must find a style for each play,” he said. While he was acting in plays directed by Sir John Gielgud and Orson Welles, he ordered both of them to go away and let the actors get on with it. His behaviour could provoke ridicule. Richard Burton, for instance, said: “I love Larry, but he really is a shallow little man with a mediocre intelligence.” This was nonsense, as is shown by Mr Ziegler’s account of Olivier’s preparation for a performance, and his attention to fine detail as a director.