Anna Karenina is a 1948 British film based on the 19th-century novel of the same title by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, produced by Alexander Korda and distributed in the United States by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Julien Duvivier, and starred Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and Kieron Moore, with costumes designed by Cecil Beaton.
Leigh plays the title role, a gentlewoman married to Alexei Karenin, a cold government official in St Petersburg. Anna is swept off her feet by Vronsky, a dashing young military officer, while he is also instantly infatuated with her on the day they met at the train station in Moscow. Their ensuing love affair will lead to tragic results.
Vivien Leigh (5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967; born Vivian Mary Hartley and styled as Lady Olivier after 1947) was a British actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her definitive performances as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London’s West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963). Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Leigh as the 16th greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema.
After completing her drama school education, Leigh appeared in small roles in four films in 1935 and progressed to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that her physical attributes sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. Despite her fame as a screen actress, Leigh was primarily a stage performer. During her 30-year career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Later in life, she performed as a character actress in a few films.
At the time, the public strongly identified Leigh with her second husband, Laurence Olivier, who was her spouse from 1940 to 1960. Leigh and Olivier starred together in many stage productions, with Olivier often directing, and in three films. She earned a reputation for being difficult to work with and for much of her adult life, she had bipolar disorder, as well as recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, which was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s and ultimately led to her death at the age of 53. (Wikipedia)
Here are some stunning photos of her as Anna:
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