page_title: David Niven
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: David Niven / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: David Niven with his wife Hjördis Genberg/HjördisTersmeden, 1959
context_page_description: James David Graham Niven was an English actor, memoirist and novelist. His many roles included Squadron Leader Peter Carter in A Matter of Life and Death, Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days, and Sir Charles Lytton in The Pink Panther. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Separate Tables.
  Born in London, Niven attended Heatherdown Preparatory School and Stowe School before gaining a place at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After Sandhurst, he joined the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry. Having developed an interest in acting, he left the army, travelled to Hollywood and had several minor roles in film. He first appeared as an extra in the British film There Goes the Bride. From there, he hired an agent and had several small parts in films from 1933 to 1935, including a non-speaking role in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Mutiny on the Bounty. This brought him to wider attention within the film industry and he was spotted by Samuel Goldwyn. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Niven returned to Britain and rejoined the army, being recommissioned as a lieutenant.
context_section_description: While on leave in 1940, Niven met Primula "Primmie" Susan Rollo (18 February 1918, London – 21 May 1946), the daughter of London lawyer William H.C. Rollo. After a whirlwind romance, they married on 16 September. A son, David, Jr., was born in December 1942 and a second son, James Graham Niven, on 6 November 1945. Primmie died at the age of 28, only six weeks after the family moved to the US. She fractured her skull in an accidental fall in the Beverly Hills, California home of Tyrone Power, while playing a game of hide-and-seek. She had walked through a door believing it to be a closet, but instead it led to a stone staircase to the basement.
  
  In 1948, Niven met Hjördis Paulina Tersmeden (née Genberg, 1919–1997), a divorced Swedish fashion model. He recounted their meeting:
  I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life—tall, slim, auburn hair, up-tilted nose, lovely mouth and the most enormous grey eyes I had ever seen. It really happened the way it does when written by the worst lady novelists ... I goggled. I had difficulty swallowing and had champagne in my knees.
  In New York, Niven and Hjördis were next-door neighbours with Audrey Hepburn, who made her debut on Broadway that season. In 1960, while filming Please Don't Eat the Daisies with Doris Day, Niven and Hjördis separated for a few weeks, but later reconciled, although their alcoholism, his frequent adultery and her violent temper made the marriage rather miserable.
  In 1960, Niven moved to Château-d'Œx near Gstaad in Switzerland for financial reasons, living near close friends in that country including Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov, and Noël Coward. Niven's status as a tax exile in Switzerland is believed to have been one of the reasons why he never received a British honour. He divided his time in the 1960s and 1970s between Château-d'Œx and Cap Ferrat on the Côte d'Azur in the south of France.
  A 2009 biography of Niven contained assertions, based on information from his widow and a good friend of Niven, that he had an affair with Princess Margaret, 20 years his junior.
caption: Niven with his wife Hjördis Genberg (Hjördis Tersmeden), 1960
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