Leigh would later win another Oscar in 1951 for playing Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. She had already played the role on stage under Olivier's direction in London, in a production where Olivier had interpreted the play differently than the film director Elia Kazan. Tynan had criticized Leigh's stage performances, including her Blanche, suggesting that Olivier was compromising his own talent for hers.

Leigh was a mercurial actress, increasingly plagued by her bipolar disorder, and Pendleton attributes the breakup of the Oliviers' marriage chiefly to this. There's little mention of the fact that Plowright was married when she met Olivier in 1957, during rehearsals of The Entertainer, a play John Osborne had written for Olivier. Plowright, sixteen years younger than Leigh, did not divorce her husband until 1961, the same year she married Olivier to become his third wife.

According to IMDB, Plowright herself has even suggested that Olivier was somewhat difficult: "If a man is touched by genius, he is not an ordinary person. He doesn't lead an ordinary life. He has extremes of behaviour which you understand and you just find a way not to be swept overboard by his demons."

Although Plowright was listed as the co-respondent in Leigh's divorce from Olivier, IMDB also quotes her as saying, "I have always resented the comments that it was I who was the homewrecker of Larry's marriage to Vivien Leigh. Danny Kaye was attached to Larry far earlier than I." Either way, both of the Oliviers were having affairs.

Pendleton sidesteps and streamlines all of this hubris. His Olivier is a charming, egotistical man, somewhat jealous of Welles' early success, constantly reliving his theatrical and cinematic successes with Leigh (e.g. That Hamilton Woman,), still hurting from Tynan's harsh comments about Leigh's stage performances under his direction and about Olivier's attempts to control and mold the much younger (and less formal than Leigh) Plowright. As Olivier, Shaughnessy doesn't whine or wheedle; he just makes helpful observations, hiding his own insecurities as he simply seeks better understanding while undermining Welles' direction.

McGill's Welles is full of frustrated bluster. He can't finesse his way around Olivier's masterfully polite criticism and obsessive attention to detail. Yet he never becomes downright nasty. After all, Olivier and Welles had been friends. Welles also has a tender spot for the troubled Leigh.

Lawrence's Leigh flutters in and out of control of her mania; lightning-quick changes flash across her face as she struggles to maintain control of her emotions, particularly in a situation where most women would find it impossible--when facing her husband's much younger mistress. This Leigh sparkles with tragic fragility and draws our attention from the much more down-to-earth West as Plowright.