66 Facts About Laurence Harvey

Laurence Harvey was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents and emigrated to South Africa at an early age, before later settling in the United Kingdom after World War II.

Laurence Harvey was known for his clipped, refined accent and cool, debonair screen persona.

Laurence Harvey appeared as the brainwashed Sergeant Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate.

Laurence Harvey made his directorial debut with The Ceremony, and continued acting into the 1970s until his early death in 1973 of cancer.

Laurence Harvey was born in Joniskis, Lithuania, the youngest of three sons of Ella and Ber Skikne, Lithuanian Jewish parents.

Laurence Harvey was only fifteen when he auditioned to join the Entertainment Unit of the South African Army during the Second World War.

Laurence Harvey appeared on stage at the Library Theatre in Manchester.

Laurence Harvey made his cinema debut in the British film House of Darkness, but its distributor British Lion thought someone named Larry Skikne was not commercially viable.

One version has it that it was the idea of talent agent Gordon Harbord who decided Laurence Harvey would be an appropriate first name.

Laurence Harvey appeared in supporting roles in several of their lower-budget films such as Man on the Run, Landfall and The Dancing Years.

Laurence Harvey had a small role in the Hollywood-financed The Black Rose, starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles, directed by Henry Hathaway.

Laurence Harvey played Cassio in a version of Othello for BBC TV starring Andre Morell.

Laurence Harvey starred in leading roles for two B-pictures for director Lewis Gilbert at Nettleford Films: Scarlet Thread and There Is Another Sun.

Laurence Harvey starred in the low-budget thriller A Killer Walks.

Laurence Harvey's career gained a boost when he appeared in Women of Twilight ; this was made by Romulus Films run by brothers John and James Woolf, who signed Laurence Harvey to a long-term contract.

James Woolf in particular was a big admirer of Laurence Harvey and played an important role in turning the actor into a star.

Laurence Harvey had an especially strong role in the latter, which was directed by Lewis Gilbert, and featured Hollywood actors such as John Ireland, Richard Basehart and Gloria Grahame, along with Leighton.

Laurence Harvey played Romeo in Renato Castellani's adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, narrated by John Gielgud.

Laurence Harvey made his Broadway debut in 1955 in the play Island of Goats, a flop that closed after one week, though his performance won him a 1956 Theatre World Award.

Laurence Harvey appeared in The Bet for ITV Television Playhouse then did another for Romulus, After the Ball, a biopic of Vesta Tilley, in which Laurence Harvey played Walter de Frece.

Laurence Harvey followed it with The Truth About Women, a comedy directed by Muriel Box for Beaconsfield Productions.

Laurence Harvey returned to Broadway in 1957 to appear alongside Julie Harris, Pamela Brown and Colleen Dewhurst in William Wycherley's The Country Wife.

For Romulus, Laurence Harvey starred in The Silent Enemy, with his old friend Sid James, a biopic of war hero Lionel Crabb.

Laurence Harvey went to Broadway in 1958, as Shakespeare's Henry V, as part of the Old Vic company, which featured a young Judi Dench as Katherine, the daughter of the king of France.

Laurence Harvey followed it with the musical Expresso Bongo, a film best remembered for introducing Cliff Richard.

Laurence Harvey did The Violent Years for the ITV Play of the Week.

The success of Room at the Top led to Hollywood offers and Laurence Harvey decided to spend the next three years focusing on films.

Laurence Harvey was in John Wayne's epic The Alamo, being John Wayne's personal choice to play Alamo commandant William Barret Travis.

Laurence Harvey was named for The Eddie Chapman Story but it was not made until years later, as Triple Cross with Christopher Plummer.

Back in Britain, Laurence Harvey was cast in the film version of The Long and the Short and the Tall in a role originally performed by Peter O'Toole during the play's West End run.

Laurence Harvey clashed with Richard Todd and Richard Harris during filming but the movie was a hit in Britain.

Laurence Harvey was announced for some films that were not made.

Laurence Harvey signed to appear in the film of Five Finger Exercise but was not in the eventual film.

Laurence Harvey played the male lead in Walk on the Wild Side, produced by Charles Feldman, cast alongside Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Fonda and Capucine.

Laurence Harvey appeared as the brainwashed US Army Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury.

Laurence Harvey went to Japan to make A Girl Named Tamiko with France Nuyen for director John Sturges and producer Hal Wallis.

Laurence Harvey followed this with The Running Man, directed by Carol Reed, with Lee Remick and Alan Bates.

Laurence Harvey made his directorial debut with the crime drama The Ceremony, in which he starred.

Laurence Harvey played King Arthur in the 1964 London production of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical Camelot at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Laurence Harvey was the male lead in an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, co starring Kim Novak.

Laurence Harvey had been connected to the project for several years.

Laurence Harvey reprised his role as Joe Lampton in Life at the Top, directed by Ted Kotcheff.

Laurence Harvey had his first commercially successful film in a number of years with Darling, starring Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde.

Laurence Harvey starred in a version of The Doctor and the Devils directed by Nicholas Ray from a script by Dylan Thomas but the film was not completed.

Laurence Harvey co-starred with Israeli actress Daliah Lavi in the comedy The Spy with a Cold Nose, a parody of the James Bond films.

Laurence Harvey did The Winter's Tale and then Dial M for Murder for American TV.

Laurence Harvey owned the rights to the book on which John Osborne's early script for the film The Charge of the Light Brigade was partially based, Cecil Woodham-Smith's book The Reason Why.

Laurence Harvey's scenes were cut from the movie at Richardson's insistence except for a brief glimpse as an anonymous member of a theatre audience which, technically, still met the requirements of the legal settlement.

Laurence Harvey completed direction of the spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic after director Anthony Mann died during production.

The critics greeted it with disdain but the plot was tailor-made for Laurence Harvey, who plays a Russian spy who has adopted an English identity so he can go undercover within British Intelligence.

Laurence Harvey provided the narration for the Soviet film Tchaikovsky, directed by Igor Talankin.

Laurence Harvey co-starred with Ann-Margret in Rebus then appeared in Kampf um Rom, a film set in Ancient Rome.

Laurence Harvey starred in She and He, which he helped produce.

Laurence Harvey had a cameo role as himself in The Magic Christian, a film based on the Terry Southern novel of the same name.

Laurence Harvey gives a rendition of Hamlet's soliloquy that develops unexpectedly into a campy striptease routine.

Laurence Harvey had a small role in WUSA and was guest murderer on Columbo: The Most Dangerous Match in 1973, portraying a chess champion who kills his opponent.

Laurence Harvey starred in Escape to the Sun, directed by Menahem Golan and was reunited with Elizabeth Taylor in Night Watch, financed by Brut Productions.

Laurence Harvey's death put an end to any hope that Orson Welles's The Deep would be completed.

Laurence Harvey met Hermione Baddeley, an established actress, when they were cast in the film There Is Another Sun in 1950.

Laurence Harvey became his live-in partner and a lucky charm for his career.

Laurence Harvey introduced him to Basil Dean and his first part on the London stage in Hassan, followed by a season at Stratford in 1952 with Glen Byam Shaw.

Laurence Harvey left Baddeley in 1952 for actress Margaret Leighton, who was then married to publisher Max Reinhardt.

Laurence Harvey gave birth to their daughter Domino in 1969 while he was still married to Perry.

Laurence Harvey died at the age of 35, in 2005, after overdosing on the painkiller drug fentanyl.

The image Mr Laurence Harvey carefully fostered for himself off screen was not far removed from some of the roles he played.

Laurence Harvey flaunted a cigarette holder almost as a parody of Terry Thomas' and boasted that his drainpipe trousers pre-dated the teddy boys'.