Laurence Olivier honoured with blue plaque unveiled by Ian McKellen

Ian McKellen said it was the fate of actors to be forgotten 20 years after their death, but that Olivier’s memory lived on in many ways. Photograph: Ian West/PA

Laurence Olivier has joined David Garrick, Henry Irving, Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward in having an English Heritage blue plaque outside his former London home.

Ian McKellen unveiled the plaque at 22 Lupus Street in Pimlico, where Olivier lived from the age of five to 12 and discovered a talent for acting under the watchful eye of his father, a curate at St Saviour’s church across the road.