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
Margaret Elizabeth Leigh a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1927. Having suffered a stroke in 1909, Lord Jersey died at Osterley Park, Middlesex, in May 1915, aged 70 - Margaret survived her husband by 30 years and died at Middleton Park, Oxfordshire, in May 1945, aged 95. Margaret Elizabeth Leigh Margaret Elizabeth Leigh (29 October 1849 – 22 May 1945), later Margaret Elizabeth Leigh Child-Villiers, Countess of Jersey, was an English noblewoman, activist, writer and hymn-writer. She was the daughter and eldest child of William Henry Leigh, 2nd Baron Leigh. On 19 September 1872 she married Victor Child