Jill Esmond; Actress and Former Wife of Olivier

Jill Esmond, the comely film and stage actress of the 1930s and ‘40s whose divorce from Sir Laurence Olivier made possible his marriage to Vivien Leigh, has died.

Her family told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Miss Esmond, who never remarried, had died Saturday at her home in Wimbledon in southwest London. She was 82 and no cause of death was given.

Born Jill Esmond-Moore in London, she was the daughter of dramatist Henry Vernon Esmond and actress Eva Moore.

She studied at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made her London stage debut at age 14 in 1922, playing the role of Nibs in “Peter Pan.”

In 1925, she played Sorel Bliss in Noel Coward’s comedy “Hay Fever.”

She was 20 when she met Olivier in 1928, when she was playing in John Drinkwater’s “Bird in Hand” and he joined the cast.

She appeared in three British films, “The Chinese Bungalow,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Skin Game” and “The Eternal Feminine” before leaving with Olivier for the United States.

They made their Broadway debuts in 1929, she in “Bird in Hand” and Olivier in “Murder on the Second Floor.”

She married Olivier in 1930, and the following year they appeared together on Broadway with Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in Coward’s “Private Lives.”

Miss Esmond went on to featured roles in such films of the early 1930s as “State’s Attorney” with John Barrymore, “Thirteen Women” with Irene Dunne and Myrna Loy and “Once a Lady” with Ruth Chatterton.

At that point in her career, she was considered a bigger star than her husband.

Although she was seen on screen early in her career as a charming leading lady, over the years she settled into more staid character roles.

In 1935 she became pregnant, but about this time Olivier told her he had fallen in love with Miss Leigh, whom he had met in Hollywood while making “Wuthering Heights.” They remained married, however, and in 1937 Miss Esmond was Olivia to her husband’s Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” at London’s Old Vic theater.

By then their marriage had become impossible for her, as Olivier and Miss Leigh were seen in each other’s company at parties and premieres around the world.

In January, 1940, Miss Leigh was sued for divorce by her husband, Herbert Leigh Holman, and Miss Esmond filed a similar action in London.

Olivier married Miss Leigh the following year. That marriage ended in divorce in 1961. Olivier, whose third wife was actress Joan Plowright, died last year at age 82.

In 1942, Miss Esmond returned to Broadway in “The Morning Star” and appeared in secondary roles in such Hollywood films as “The White Cliffs of Dover,” “Random Harvest” and “Casanova Brown.”

In 1946, she returned to Britain, where she resumed her movie career in “Bedelia” and “Escape.”

She made her last London stage appearance in “Party Manners” in 1950, and her movie career ended in 1955 with “A Man Called Peter.”

Her son, Tarquin, survives her.