Vivien Leigh, born Vivian Mary Hartley on November 5, 1913, had an intriguing childhood marked by travels and early exposure to arts and culture. She was born in Darjeeling, British India, to a British family. Her father, Ernest Hartley, was a broker, and her mother, Gertrude Robinson Yackjee, had Indian and Armenian ancestry, which gave Vivien a rich cultural background.
In 1917, Ernest Hartley was transferred to Bangalore as an officer in the Indian Cavalry, while Gertrude and Vivian stayed in Ootacamund. At the age of three, Vivian made her first stage appearance for her mother’s amateur theatre group, reciting “Little Bo Peep.” Gertrude Hartley tried to instill an appreciation of literature in her daughter and introduced her to the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, as well as stories of Greek mythology and Indian folklore.
At the age of six, Vivian was sent by her mother from Loreto Convent, Darjeeling, to the Convent of the Sacred Heart (now Woldingham School) then situated in Roehampton, south-west London. One of her friends there was future actress Maureen O’Sullivan, two years her senior, to whom Vivian expressed her desire to become “a great actress.”
She was removed from the school by her father, and traveling with her parents for four years, she attended schools in Europe, notably in Dinard (Brittany, France), Biarritz (France), the Sacred Heart in San Remo on the Italian Riviera, and in Paris, becoming fluent in both French and Italian.
The family returned to Britain in 1931. She attended A Connecticut Yankee, one of O’Sullivan’s films playing in London’s West End, and told her parents of her ambitions to become an actress. Shortly after, her father enrolled Vivian at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. Although she initially paused her studies to marry Herbert Leigh Holman in 1932, she eventually returned to her acting career with determination.
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