Early Life
Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne, but it was actually Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ella (née Zotnickaita) and Ber Skikne, a Lithuanian Jewish family in the town of Joniškis, Lithuania. When he was five years old, his family emigrated to South Africa, where he was known as Harry Skikne.
He grew up in Johannesburg, and was in his teens when he served with the entertainment unit of the South African Army during the Second World War. After moving to London, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where he became known as Larry. After leaving RADA early, he began to perform on stage and film, where he adopted the stage name "Laurence Harvey", taken either from the shop name Harvey Nichols or from Harvey's Bristol Cream.
Read more about this topic: Laurence Harvey
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and organize.”
—Albert Gore, Jr. (b. 1948)
“You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it -the bread of affliction -because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 16:3.