A British citizen, since Australian citizenship did not exist until the creation of the Commonwealth in 1949.
A chain smoker, in the last year of his life, he underwent hospital tests to see whether he had throat cancer.
A recent Australian documentary on his life and career, narrated by Christopher Lee, included a film clip of Flynn being interviewed on his being nominated for the Academy Award for his critically acclaimed performance in The Sun Also Rises (1957). We are then told that the nomination "disappeared".
According to his autobiography, Errol Flynn's mother, Marelle Young, was a descendant of Midshipman Edward ("Ned") Young, a Bounty mutineer who went to Pitcairn with Fletcher Christian. Young had four children with Toofaiti, Nancy, George, Robert and William, and three more with Christian's widow Mauatua, Edward, Polly and Dorothea. His descendants still live on Pitcairn, Norfolk and in New Zealand.
Although Australian, his genealogy shows both British and Irish descent.
Although only 50, he succumbed to a massive heart attack at the apartment of Dr. Grant Gould in Vancouver while he was there to sell his yacht (The Zaca) to an old friend, George Caldough. The yacht was his "pride and joy", but due to financial difficulties, he was forced to sell it and had primarily lived on it during his final years. The autopsy showed he had the body of a 75-year-old man.
Became seriously ill with liver failure in the mid-1950s.
Best remembered by the public for his starring in swash-buckling adventure films.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#86). [1995]
Declaring to his second wife that he wanted to experience everything in life, he began dabbling in opium in the late 1940s and quickly became a full-fledged addict. His opium addiction and the effects of the alcohol that ravaged his body over the years contributed to his premature death in 1959 at only age 50.
Dream project was a biopic about the notorious Australian-Irish outlaw Ned Kelly, which nearly got produced by Warner Brothers in the mid 1940s.
Errol Flynn described his mother's family as "seafaring folk" and this appears to be where his life-long passion for boats and the sea originated.
Errol Flynn was portrayed by Jude Law in Martin Scorsese's 2004 film The Aviator starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Errol Flynn's father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer (1909) and later professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania (UTAS).
Errol Flynn's first book, Beam Ends, an autobiographical account of his sailing trips around Australia, was published in 1937.
Father of Deirdre Flynn and Rory Flynn.
Father with Nora Eddington of Deirdre (born January 10, 1945) and Rory (born March 12, 1947).
Father, with Patrice Wymore of Arnella (25 December 1953 - 21 September 1998)
Father, with Lili Damita of photojournalist Sean Flynn (1941 - 1970).
Flynn was married three times: to actress Lili Damita from 1935 until 1942 (one son, Sean Flynn, born 1941, reported missing in Cambodia in 1970 and presumed dead); to Nora Eddington from 1943 until 1949 (two daughters, Deirdre born 1945 and Rory born 1947); and to actress Patrice Wymore from 1950 until his death (one daughter, Arnella Roma, 1953–98).