FROM Internet Movie Data Base "Biography":
Olivia Mary de Havilland was born July 1, 1916, in Tokyo, Japan, to British parents Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister, Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her surname comes from her paternal grandfather, whose family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her parents divorced when Olivia was just three years old, and she moved with her mother and sister to Saratoga, California. After graduating from high school, where she fell prey to the acting bug, Olivia enrolled in Mills College in Oakland. It was while she was at Mills that she participated in the school play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and was spotted by Max Reinhardt. She so impressed Reinhardt that he picked her up for both his stage version and, later, the Warner Bros. film version in 1935. She again was so impressive that Warner executives signed her to a seven-year contract.
Playing the sweet Melanie Hamilton, Olivia received her first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, only to lose out to one of her co-stars in the film GWTW, Hattie McDaniel. After GWTW, Olivia returned to Warner Bros. and continued to churn out films. In 1941 she played Emmy Brown in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which resulted in her second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. Again she lost, this time to her sister Joan for her role in Suspicion (1941). After that strong showing, Olivia now demanded better, more substantial roles than the "sweet young thing" slot into which Warner Brothers had been fitting her. . . Returning to screen in 1946, Olivia made up for lost time by appearing in four films, one of which finally won her the Oscar that had so long eluded her. It was To Each His Own (1946), in which she played Josephine Norris to the delight of critics and audiences alike. Olivia was the strongest performer in Hollywood for the balance of the 1940s. In 1948 she turned in another strong showing in The Snake Pit (1948) as Virginia Cunningham, a woman suffering a mental breakdown. The end result was another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but she lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948). As in the two previous years, she made only one film in 1949, but she again won a nomination and the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Heiress (1949). When Alicia Rhett, who played India, the daughter of John Wilkes in the classic "Gone with the Wind", died less than one month before her 99th birthday on January 3, 2014, Olivia de Havilland became the very last surviving cast member from that movie. This is quite an accomplishment considering the film had over 50 speaking parts.
As of 2016 she is the earliest surviving recipient of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She was nominated in 1939 for Gone with the Wind (1939).
As of 2016 she is the earliest surviving recipient of a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She was nominated in 1941 for Hold Back the Dawn (1941),.
In celebration of her 100th birthday, she was honored as Turner Classic Movies Star of the Month for July 2016.
Olivia de Havilland is only the third Oscar-winning actor to celebrate a 100th birthday. The others are Luise Rainer, who lived to be 104, and George Burns, who died less than two months after passing the 100-year mark.
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