A TRICKY pub quiz question might be “who was the first British star to win a best actress Oscar?” An even trickier one would be “who – along with Olivia De Havilland and Glenda Jackson – is the only British star to win two best actress Oscars?” Trickier still would be “which British star requested that her ashes be scattered on a lake in Sussex after her death?” In all three cases, the answer is the same: Vivien Leigh.

Nowadays, Vivien Leigh might not be the first name to spring to mind when thinking of cinematic beauty. Yet in her heyday of the 1940s, she was undoubtedly one of the most glamorous and admired women in the world. Her high-profile marriage with Laurence Olivier made them Britain’s most fêted and photographed celebrity couple, admired for their sense of style as well as for their powerhouse talent.

Above all, Leigh was responsible for incarnating the central roles in two classic Hollywood melodramas which framed her star decade: Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). These were the films for which she rightly won Oscars, and her two performances that people are still likely to see and remember today. Remarkably, given her classically British poise and diction, both involved playing unstable Southern belles, with an intensity rare in that era. And both can now be seen to reflect aspects of the private demons that beset and ultimately wrecked her career - demons that Michael Radford’s forthcoming biopic Vivien promises to explore for a new generation of cinemagoers.

Vivien Leigh was the product of a classic late-imperial British upbringing. Born in India in 1913, she was sent to Britain at six for a convent education before travelling throughout Europe with her parents and then enrolling at RADA in London. From an early age, she had proclaimed her desire to become “a great actress”; however, these ambitions were put on hold in 1932 to marry Leigh Holman, a barrister thirteen years her senior. Her only child, Suzanne, was born the following year. Yet this would prove only a temporary hiatus in her pursuit of fame.

Following small roles in films and on the London stage, the springboard for Vivien Leigh’s career was her starring appearance in the West End production of Carl Sternheim’s The Mask of Virtue in 1935. Acclaimed by critics as “the sensation of the season”, she was also seen by both Alexander Korda and Laurence Olivier. The former, Britain’s most powerful film producer, immediately signed her to a contact; the latter, already Britain’s most famous actor, was to became her lover and her second husband.

The affair with Olivier, initiated during the filming of Fire Over England (1937), was clearly passionate and tempestuous from the start. Both stars abandoned their spouses and young children to live together in Hollywood, where Olivier was filming Wuthering Heights. By thirties standards, this was scandalous behaviour which had to be kept from moviegoers by studio publicists. However, the move to the US also enabled Leigh to test for the coveted part of Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s grandiose but troubled production of Gone with the Wind.

Selznick had already auditioned well over a hundred actresses for the role, including most of the leading American stars of the day - yet it was the impeccably British Leigh who would immortalise the headstrong heiress in what was to become the highest-grossing movie of all time. Ironically, her immortal final line (“After all - tomorrow is another day”) would come to be a touchstone for the switchback ride of her subsequent career, in which triumph alternated with disaster.

The glamour and fame surrounding Leigh and Olivier (they married in 1940) was now intense. Perhaps their high-water mark together was That Hamilton Woman (1941), a patriotic saga made at the height of WW2 - both Churchill and Roosevelt were fans. Yet despite this, all was not well with Leigh. A diagnosis of tuberculosis in 1944 (she was a chain-smoker) was followed by miscarriage and the first of many catastrophic breakdowns. While Olivier nursed her through these crises with a public façade of unity, the relationship was fractured.

Leigh was to have one more great triumph, however. In 1949, Olivier directed her as the unhinged Blanche DuBois in the London stage premiere of Tennessee Williams’ controversial A Streetcar Named Desire. This led directly to her Oscar-winning reprise of the part, cast opposite the incendiary young Marlon Brando; for many, it was her greatest performance, but Leigh herself later said that it “tipped me over into madness”.

The rest was increasingly bleak. Among many mania-induced flings, the chaos ensuing from a torrid affair with co-star Peter Finch during the filming of Elephant Walk in 1953 led to Leigh – now finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder – being thrown off the picture. Despite further stage successes opposite Olivier, her life was now one of increasing mania, punctuated by recourse to alcohol, electro-convulsive therapy and a string of younger lovers.

When Olivier finally divorced her in 1960 in order to marry Joan Plowright and settle in Brighton, Leigh responded by purchasing her own Sussex retreat: Tickerage Mill near Blackboys. Following her premature death from recurrent tuberculosis in 1967, the lake at Tickerage was to be the final resting place for this most mercurial of British talents. By then, the star-couple glamour of Leigh and Olivier was eclipsed by that of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - ironically, it had been Taylor who had replaced Leigh on the troubled shoot of Elephant Walk fourteen years earlier.

Vivien Leigh remains a vivid enigma of British cultural life – one whose great beauty often obscured her acting abilities. Despite her crises – when, like Blanche DuBois, she often “depended on the kindness of strangers” – she inspired lifelong devotion from husbands, lovers and colleagues alike. Although she valued herself primarily as a stage actress, it is for her films that she will be chiefly remembered – and she made only nineteen of those. Perhaps Radford’s biopic will illuminate these contradictions for new audiences. After all – tomorrow is another day.

*The author of this piece is Frank Flood of QueenSpark Books. QueenSpark Books is Britain’s longest-running community publishers, with a backlist of over 100 titles focusing on life in Brighton. Their cinema and theatre books include Back Row Brighton and Backstage Brighton; recent publications have included the much-acclaimed Brighton – The Graphic Novel and a groundbreaking overview of the city’s vibrant Trans* communities (Brighton Trans*formed). All in-print titles are available via their website (http://www.queensparkbooks.org.uk/shop/); many can also be found at City Books, Books For Amnesty, Oxfam Bookshop, Dave’s Comics and Waterstones.