Olivia Harrison

Olivia Harrison
Arias-Harrison in 2009
Harrison in 2009
Born
Olivia Trinidad Arias

(1948-05-18) May 18, 1948 (age 76)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.[1]
Occupations
  • Film producer
  • author
  • curator
  • philanthropist
Years active1972–present
Spouse
(m. 1978; died 2001)
ChildrenDhani Harrison

Olivia Trinidad Harrison (née Arias; born May 18, 1948)[2] is an American author and film producer, and the widow of English musician George Harrison of the Beatles. She first worked in the music industry in Los Angeles, for A&M Records, where she met Harrison and then helped run his Dark Horse record label. In 1990, she launched the Romanian Angel Appeal to raise funds for the thousands of orphans left abandoned in Romania after the fall of Communism.

Since her husband's death in 2001, Olivia has continued George’s international aid efforts through projects in partnership with UNICEF, and is the curator of film, book and music releases related to his legacy. She represents his voice on the Beatles' Apple Corps board and is similarly a director of his charity organisation, the Material World Foundation (MWF). Under the auspices of MWF, she has sponsored the preservation of film history in collaboration with American director Martin Scorsese. These restoration projects include short films by Charlie Chaplin and works from 1940s Mexican cinema.

She and her husband shared an interest in Eastern mysticism and spiritual practice, and her presence in his life, starting in the mid-1970s, began a period of more optimistic content in Harrison's music. At their Friar Park home in December 1999, when she overpowered a knife-wielding intruder who had repeatedly stabbed George, she was recognized as having saved her husband's life. Among Harrison's film projects, her production of Concert for George won the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video in 2005, and her co-production of Scorsese's 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World won an Emmy Award in the category "Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special". She authored books to accompany both these films, and in 2017 compiled a revised edition of George's 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine. Her son with George, Dhani Harrison, is also a musician.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Alemán/moreliafilmfest was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Harry 2003, p. 52.