BIPOLAR DISORDER

Trader Faukner (actor and friend about Vivien Leigh): If you upset her, she could be a scorpion, but it was part of her personality. She could be dangerous. She could be very, very dangerous, but also she could be very sweet, very charming, and very warming.

Laurence Olivier (from his autobiography): ... her [Vivien's] disease was called manic depression and that that meant - a possibly permanent cyclical to-and-fro between the depths of depression and wild, uncontrollable mania.

Bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depressive disorder) is characterized by experience of one or more manic episodes as well as periods of depression. The illness involves extreme mood swings - from overly "high" and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, and then back again. Severe changes in energy and behavior go along with these changes in mood. The periods of highs and lows are called episodes of mania and depression. Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through, the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe. They can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide. But there is good news: bipolar disorder can be treated, and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives.

Vivien Leigh: I cannot let well enough alone. I get restless. I have to be doing different things. I am very impatient person and headstrong. If I've made up my mind to do something, I can't be persuaded out of it.

John Russell Taylor (Vivien's biographer): When a bout of mania was coming upon her, Vivien's first action, entirely unconscious, was to start systematically taking off all of her jewelry - rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, everything - and laying down on a table. She would start compulsively cleaning something, anything.

Bipolar disorder was little understood at that time. Lithium was not yet in use, and the only treatment Vivien Leigh received was shock therapy, which was not then administered with the same level of care as today. Tarquin Olivier saw burns on Vivien's temples at times from her shock treatments. Vivien's illness, physical and mental, began to strain her marriage. Vivien was drinking heavily at times, culminating in a breakdown during the filming of Elephant Walk (she was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor).

Vivien Leigh: I'm never tired.

In spite of her illnesses, she continued to work in a handful of films and on stage, winning a second Oscar for her performance in A Streetcar Named Desire. Laurence Olivier divorced her in 1960 to marry an actress Joan Plowright.

John Russell Taylor (Vivien's biographer about her 1960s): Her manic fits were more physically violent than ever, and in them she was quite capable of destroying every object within reach and severely lacerating anyone who tried to restrain her.

Though Vivien Leigh lived for the rest of her life with an actor Jack Merivale, her friends believe that Olivier was her great love. She died of tuberculosis in 1967.

Laurence Olivier (from his autobiography): Throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness – an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble.