Laurence Olivier

Photo Mosaic

Laurence Olivier was the great pillar of the twentieth-century English stage, and there is a Taurus Sun at the base of that greatness. Taurus is the foundation of the chart, the earthy, Venusian builder who shines by holding a solid ground of craft, taste and unshakeable conviction, and Olivier built things that lasted: the Old Vic into a revered company, and later Britain's National Theatre, whose largest auditorium bears his name. His Sun sits in the twelfth house, the unknowable house of imagination and dissolving into other selves, and here the bull's solidity becomes something rarer, a man who could vanish so completely into Richard III, Othello or Hamlet that the self seemed to disappear into the role. His Moon in Virgo, placed in the fifth house of creativity and love, gave him the meticulous perfectionist's devotion to the fifth-house arts, and the tumult too: three marriages, including the storied union with Vivien Leigh, since this Moon binds peace of mind to the beloved and the created work. With Gemini rising, the quicksilver mask of the shape-shifting messenger, he became the century's supreme chameleon. Two Oscars, five Emmys, a knighthood and a peerage followed a life spent dissolving into others.