One of the best things about Academy Award time is being able to play the trivia game. Are you up on your Oscar trivia? Did you know that Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar for Best Director? Cary Grant never won a Best Actor award? Quick, who is the oldest living Oscar winner? No, the answer is not Daniel Day-Lewis. He's not that talented. The oldest living Oscar winner is Olivia de Havilland, for the record.
Olivia De Havilland is a two time Best Actress Award Winner. She won in 1947 for To Each His Own and in 1950 for The Heiress. She is also the last surviving major cast member of Gone With the Wind. She played the role of Melanie in that classic film. Miss de Havilland is also one of the sole representatives left of the golden age of Hollywood, when films and actors were controlled by a studio system.
She was born in Tokyo in 1916 to English parents but was raised in California. She made her film debut in 1935. The actress then became part of a screen tandem for a while with legendary Hollywood bad boy Errol Flynn.They made eight movies together. Olivia De Havilland captured a role in 1939's Gone With The Wind . In the 1940's she began to emerge in more serious films but was unhappy with her studio Warner Brothers. She then did something that would shakeup and change Hollywood.
Under the old studio system an actor would sign a seven year contract which they could extend as much as they wanted it to. According to Msinthebiz, Olivia got herself some good lawyers and broke her contract. This decision was one thing that help break down the studio system. They couldn't control their actors with long contracts anymore. This is called the De Havilland decision. Olivia retired to Paris and had a couple of children in the 1950's. Olivia de Havilland will be 100 years old in January.
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