因《魂断蓝桥》《乱世佳人》而为中国观众熟知的英国女演员费雯丽只活到54岁。无论是小家碧玉型的南方美妇、还是为情断肠的风尘女子，都是她留在银幕上的经典形象。想不想知道她与劳仑斯•奥利弗婚姻前后？她的肺结核是不是致命的？她是怎么得到《飘》的主演的？

Vivien Leigh was an English actress who was born in India. She and her parents later moved to England, where young Leigh grew up. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, She was married in 1932 to Herbert Leigh Holman, and they had a daughter, Suzanne, in 1933.

Leigh's career began on the stage. Her first play was The Green Sash, though it was Mask of Virtue that really brought her to stardom. In 1935, she began her film career with several movies, and starred in four films In 1937: Fire Over England, 21 Days opposite Laurence Olivier (which was shelved until 1940), Dark Journey and Storm in a Teacup. The next year Vivien gave two of the best performances of her movie career: the flirtative Elza in A Yank at Oxford and the marvelous and ambitious street performer Libby in St. Martin's Lane.

Leigh's better known role, however, is Scarlett in Gone With the Wind , for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. The much-coveted role had an exhausting "talent search" in which many popular actresses were considered for the role opposite Clark Gable. Producer David O. Selznick had secretly selected Leigh for the role after seeing her in the MGM film A Yank at Oxford, but told no one until late 1938, when filming began. She was finally cast as Margaret Mitchell's Southern belle.

In 1940, Leigh arranged for a divorce from Holman and married Laurence Olivier. The pair had met in 1935 and had begun a rather public love affair. At the time, both were married (Olivier to actress Jill who was pregnant when the affair began).

4 years later, the actress was diagnosed as having a tuberculosis patch on her left lung. Though she continued her career with such plays as Thornton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth, the 1945 film Caesar and Cleopatra, and the 1948 epic film Anna Karenina, her illness was getting worse. In 1952, however, Leigh won a second Academy Award for her portrayal the previous year of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

By the early 1960s Leigh had suffered two miscarriages, and the severity of the tuberculosis was incapacitating. She had also been plagued by manic-depression for some time, which was believed to be a factor in the failure to cure her ailment. In 1960, she and Olivier divorced on supposedly friendly terms. Leigh continued to keep a framed photograph of him on her bedside table, even while living with her companion, actor Jack Merivale.

The actress died of chronic tuberculosis in her London home. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered on the lake at Tickerage Mill pond, near Blackboys, Sussex, London. 

Academy Award for Best Actress 奥斯卡最佳女演员奖
stardom n. 演员的身份           starred 被委派为主角 miscarriage n. 流产
opposite a. 与……演对手戏   covet v. 垂涎，觊觎     cremate v. 火葬
tuberculosis n. 肺结核           chronic a. 慢性的         diagnose v. 诊断为