Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh poured a depth into her performances that unsettled as much as it dazzled, and her chart tells you why. Born in 1913, she carried a Scorpio Sun, the eagle at the core, the one whose shining comes through transformation, death and rebirth. That is Scarlett O'Hara clawing survival from ruin, and it is Blanche DuBois disintegrating in the film of A Streetcar Named Desire, roles that won her two Academy Awards and let her wear an avatar that kept dying and being reborn. Her Sun sits in the ninth house of the far and the cultured, fitting for an actress who ranged across Shakespeare, Shaw and Coward from the West End stage she loved best. Her Aquarius Moon, freshly risen in the first house, placed her feelings right under the skin: a sensitive, hypnotic presence, but also an erratic, electric psyche, and she lived much of her life with bipolar disorder. A Capricorn Ascendant gave her the poised, model-like mask that made her beauty legend, sometimes to her frustration. Tuberculosis took her at 53. A chart names the current a soul swims against; hers ran deep and turbulent, and she made art of it.