Vivien Leigh friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. Olivier and Leigh began an affair while acting as lovers in "Fire Over England" (1937), but Olivier was still married to actress Jill Esmond. During this period, Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell novel "Gone with the Wind" and instructed her American agent to recommend her to David O. Selznick, who was planning a film version. She remarked to a journalist, "I've cast myself as Scarlett O'Hara", and "The Observer" film critic C. A. Lejeune recalled a conversation of the same period in which Leigh "stunned us all" with the assertion that
Gone with the Wind (film) "accentuate the split personality she portrays" and thought she was particularly effective in such moments of characterization like the morning after the marital rape scene. Flinn also found Leigh suited to the role physically and felt she was best in the scenes where she displays courage and determination, such as the escape from Atlanta and when Scarlett kills a Yankee deserter. Leigh won in the Best Actress category for her performance at the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Of Clark Gable's performance as Rhett Butler, Flinn felt the characterization was "as close to Miss Mitchell's conception—and the audience's—as