 In his decade in charge of the National , Olivier acted in thirteen plays and directed eight . Several of the roles he played were minor characters , including a <unk> butler in <unk> 's A <unk> in Her <unk> and a <unk> solicitor in Maugham 's Home and Beauty ; the vulgar soldier Captain <unk> in <unk> 's 1706 comedy The <unk> Officer was a larger role but not the leading one . Apart from his Astrov in the Uncle Vanya , familiar from Chichester , his first leading role for the National was Othello , directed by Dexter in 1964 . The production was a box @-@ office success and was revived regularly over the next five seasons . His performance divided opinion . Most of the reviewers and theatrical colleagues praised it highly ; Franco <unk> called it " an anthology of everything that has been discovered about acting in the past three centuries . " <unk> voices included The Sunday Telegraph , which called it " the kind of bad acting of which only a great actor is capable ... near the <unk> of self @-@ parody " ; the director Jonathan Miller thought it " a condescending view of an Afro Caribbean person " . The burden of playing this demanding part at the same time as managing the new company and planning for the move to the new theatre took its toll on Olivier . To add to his load , he felt obliged to take over as <unk> in The Master <unk> when the ailing Redgrave withdrew from the role in November 1964 . For the first time Olivier began to suffer from stage <unk> , which plagued him for several years . The National Theatre production of Othello was released as a film in 1965 , which earned four Academy Award nominations , including another for Best Actor for Olivier . 
