Want to know the best Laurence Olivier movies? How about the worst Laurence Olivier movies? Curious about Laurence Olivier box office grosses or which Laurence Olivier movie picked up the most Oscar nominations? Need to know which Laurence Olivier movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well, you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
One of our goals here at Ultimate Movie Rankings is to do a career movie page on every member of the American Film Institute’s Top 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. Another one of our goals is to knock out all the requests on our Request Hotline. So when I saw that Laurence Olivier had four requests for a movie page and that he is ranked as the 14th greatest screen legend on the AFI list…..we knew it was time to finally do an Olivier movie page. Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) was an Oscar® winning English actor. Although he gained his fame by dominating the British stage….he still managed to appear in over 50 movies in 6 different decades.
His IMDb page shows 86 acting credits from 1930-1989. This page will rank Laurence Olivier movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, shorts, documentaries, movies not released in North America and some of his early 1930s movies were not included in the rankings.
Laurence Olivier Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Laurence Olivier Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies any way you want.
- Sort Laurence Olivier movies by co-stars of their movies.
- Sort Laurence Olivier movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Laurence Olivier movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Laurence Olivier movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Laurence Olivier movie received and by many Oscar® wins each Laurence Olivier movie won
- Sort Laurence Olivier movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Laurence Olivier
1. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Steyning, West Sussex, England.
2. Laurence Olivier’s road to stardom Cliff Notes style….As a teenager, Olivier studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He then joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and gained notoriety for his stage work. After appearing in a couple of minor movies he got a contract with RKO and headed to Hollywood. When his RKO movies and Perfect Understanding with Gloria Swanson were box office disasters he headed back to the British stage. In 1938 Hollywood came calling again. This time things went much better for Olivier as 1939’s Wuthering Heights and 1940’s Rebecca were box office and critical successes and earned Olivier his first two Oscar® nominations. Olivier would remain a star until his passing in 1989.
3. Laurence Olivier was nominated for 10 acting Oscars® and 1 directing Oscar®. He won the Best Actor Oscar® for 1948’s Hamlet. He also received two Honorary Oscars® in 1947 and 1979.
4. Laurence Olivier is one of five actors or actresses to get 10 or more acting Oscar® nominations. Olivier and Bette Davis got 10 nominations. Jack Nicholson and Katharine Hepburn got 12 nominations and Meryl Streep has 126 nominations….ok she only has 19 but it seems like she gets one every year.
5. Laurence Olivier also received 5 Golden Globe® nominations….winning twice, 9 Emmy® nominations…winning 5 times, 10 BAFTA nominations…winning twice and won two Razzie® awards….though he probably did not want those Razzies®.
6. Laurence Olivier was married three times in her life. His first marriage to Jill Esmond lasted from 1930 to 1940…they had one child. His second and most famous marriage was to Vivien Leigh…it lasted from 1940 to 1961. His final marriage was to Joan Plowright from 1961 to his death in 1989…they had three children. While researching this page I came across an excellent website that looks at Olivier and Vivien Leigh…. I highly recommend that you check this site out.
7. Roles Laurence Olivier turned down or was seriously considered for: Lawrence of Arabia (Peter O’Toole role), Lolita (James Mason role), The Godfather (Marlon Brando role), Cleopatra (Rex Harrison role) Being There (Melvyn Douglas role) and I Confess (Montgomery Clift role).
8. Laurence Olivier was knighted in 1947, made life peer in 1970, awarded the Order of Merit in 1981.
9. Some thoughts on Olivier. Charlton Heston on Sir Larry….”I consider him, in common with my colleagues, the finest actor alive.” Spencer Tracy on Larry….”he is the greatest of them all”.
10. Some tidbits from Laurence Olivier’s memorial service. Olivier’s trophies were carried in a procession: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. carried the insignia of Olivier’s Order of Merit, Michael Caine bore his Oscar® for lifetime achievement, Maggie Smith a silver model of the Chichester theatre, Paul Scofield a silver model of the National, Derek Jacobi the crown worn in Richard III (1955), Peter O’Toole the script used in Hamlet (1948), Ian McKellen the laurel wreath worn in the stage production of “Coriolanus”, Dorothy Tutin the crown worn for King Lear (1983), and Frank Finlay the sword presented to Olivier by John Gielgud, once worn by the 18-century actor Edmund Kean.
Check out Laurence Olivier’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page. If you want a deeper look at Olivier’s number one movie then this Rebecca movie page by Steve Lensman is an outstanding source of information.
And finally…sadly we could not find box office information on these 4 Olivier movies. 1931’s The Yellow Ticket which has critic/audience rating of 63.75%, 1931’s Potipher’s Wife with a critic/audience rating of 61.75%, 1933’s No Funny Business with a critic/audience rating of 55.25% and 1935’s I Stand Condemned with a critic/audience rating of 37.00%.
AFI’s Top 25 Screen Legend Actors….with links to my movie pages on the Screen Legend
Check Out Steve Lensman’s Laurence Olivier Movie Ranking Page
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
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My favorite story about Laurence Olivier is the behind the scenes struggles he had with Dustin Hoffman and Hoffman’s method acting. Classic stuff.
[upon seeing Dustin Hoffman’s “method” acting technique of not sleeping and making a mess of himself to get into character while shooting Marathon Man (1976)] Dear boy, it’s called acting.
[on needing to re-shoot their torture scene because Method actor Dustin Hoffman had gotten excessively drunk the first time so he’d look really out of it] Oh, why doesn’t he just *act*.
Glad to see Spartacus so highly rated in so many categories. That should have been a Academy Award nominatied performance.
Hey dozme……those are some classic thoughts from Olivier on Hoffman. It seems acting would have been so much easier for Dustin. I wonder if he still does it that way now. I agree with your thinking about Spartacus…..thanks for stopping by.
Rebecca is nb one! Yay
Hey Virginia…hard to argue with Rebecca’s stats…it was Olivier’s 2nd biggest hit….his best movie according to critics and audiences….picked up 11 Oscar nominations…won Best Picture and earned Larry’ his 2nd of 10 acting nominations. So far I have ranked over 23,000 movies and Rebecca is ranked 13th overall. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/top-250-movies/
Wow. So you have seen more than 23 000 movies in your life? That’s amazing!
A few years ago I started to combine watching movies while walking/running on my treadmill….since February 2013…..I have almost watched 3,000 movies and traveled 10,000 miles and gone nowhere…lol.
“Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!” Laurence Olivier, the greatest of them all? Probably. Charlton Heston and Spencer Tracy seem to think so. Though he did get a little hammy in his later films.
I’ve seen 27 of the 48 films you’ve listed, I may have seen some of the others, can’t remember. I have his Shakespearian classics in the collection, most recently Richard III on blu-ray, excellent copy. Nice to see Rebecca topping the moviescore, one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, I think Flora likes it too. I didn’t know it was that successful, plus the critics loved it and it won a Best Picture Oscar too, not bad. Of his later films Sleuth and Marathon Man are faves of mine.
Inchon is a film that I’ve wanted to check out and still have not seen. An expensive film Olivier plays General MacArthur, the reviews were bad and the film was a huge flop at the box office.
One of the oddest Olivier films in my collection is The Beggar’s Opera, a period piece with the great man singing, and on horseback too!
A nice collection of facts and stats Bruce, ‘Sir Larry’ would have been proud. 🙂 Voted Up.
Hey Steve….growing up Olivier’s hammy roles are the ones I was seeing….it seems like he was always the old guy….now that I am older and wiser I realize the impact Sir Larry had on movies.
My tally is 15…so you almost doubled my total. Pretty sure Olivier is one of Flora’s favorites…so I will be surprised if your 27 can hold on to the top spot….but silver is so much better than bronze.
Having ranked over 23,000 movies now….the fact that Rebecca is in the Top 100…shows that Mr. Hitchcock knew what he was doing with that one…it had it all….box office glory, critical raves, audience support and Oscar love.
Sleuth is easily my favorite Olivier movie…I know I know…Sir Michael has something to do with that….if I look at his movies without Sir Michael I would say…Spartacus and A Bridge Too Far would be my favorites….oh wait…Sir Michael is in A Bridge Too Far as well….so it would be Spartacus and Battle of Britian….no wait Sir Caine is in that one as well….he is everywhere. So it would be Spartacus and Jigsaw Man….damn there is Caine again…even though that movie never saw theaters. Ok ok I am ready Spartacus and Carrie.
I have never been a fan of Shakespeare movies….so some of his great performances get a big yawn from me. The Beggar’s Opera sounds interesting…not sure if it is interesting in a bad way or a good way. As always thanks for stopping by and commenting.
You did not include my last role. I do not think the fact that it was made years after my death should be held against me.
Hey Dr. Totenkopf. I had to look it up but I see that you are referring to the 2004’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Well I have that movie in my database….it has a UMR score of 37.97….that would be in 19th place IF it was included. We have a rule here at UMR.com…the performer has to know that he or she was in the movie to be included. Since he died in 1989 and Sky Captain was made 15 years later….we think it is safe to assume Sir Larry did not know he was in the movie..so we did not include it.
Here are the stats for the movie in case you are wondering.
Adjusted Domestic Box Office $49.50 million
Adjusted Worldwide Box Office $76.30 million
Critic/Audience Rating 67.5%
No Oscar Noms or Wins
UMR Score of 37.97
The movie can be found as the 10th highest ranked movie for Angelina Jolie.
https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/angelina-jolie-movies/
Thanks for the information.
You are welcome Dr. T.
Interesting
Thank you L.O. Fan.