Leslie Howard (1893-1943) was an English actor who played Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind (1939).
Filming Gone With the Wind[]
Leslie was the most reluctant cast member to participate in the film, even more so than Clark Gable. He only agreed to do it because David Selznick promised him to be a producer in Intermezzo (also 1939). Leslie wasn't a popular choice for the role of Ashley. He was English, not American, and he was 46, while Ashley's character was supposed to be 21. Similarly, Vivien Leigh was an English actress chosen to play Southern Belle Scarlett O'Hara. Leslie Howard never read the book and never leared the lines other than the ones he had to memorize the day of shooting. Vivien Leigh and he didn't get along.
Leslie Howard had already become very tired of playing meek, dreamy men with little drive, ambition or strength and he didn't consider acting a worthy profession. He wrote to his daughter Leslie "Doodie" Howard: "I hate the damn part. I’m not nearly beautiful or young enough for Ashley, and it makes me sick being fixed up to look attractive."
The film proved strangely therapeutic for Howard. Like his character Ashley, Leslie Howard was very worried about the approaching war (WWII) and what it would mean to his country.
He tragically died only four years after filming Gone With the Wind after his plane from Portugal back home was shot by the German Luftwaffe.