Luise Rainer

LUISE RAINER d2014. German-American-British film actress. She was the first thespian to win multiple Academy Awards and the first to win back-to-back. She started her acting career in Germany at age 16 under the tutelage of Austria's leading stage director Max Reinhardt. Within a few years, she had become a distinguished Berlin stage actress with Reinhardt's Vienna theater ensemble. Critics highly praised the quality of her acting. After years of acting on stage and in films in Austria and Germany, she was discovered by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scouts who signed her to a three-year contract in Hollywood in 1935. A number of filmmakers predicted she might become another Greta Garbo, MGM's leading female star at the time. Her first American film role was in Escapade in 1935. The following year she was given a supporting part in the musical biography The Great Ziegfeld, where, despite limited appearances, her emotion-filled performance so impressed audiences that she was awarded the Oscar for Best Actress. She was later dubbed the "Viennese teardrop" for her dramatic telephone scene in the film. For her next role, producer Irving Thalberg was convinced (despite the studio's disagreement) that she would also be able to play the part of a poor, plain Chinese farm wife in The Good Earth (1937) based on Pearl Buck's novel about hardship in China. The subdued character role was such a dramatic contrast to her previous vivacious character that she again won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She died in London aged 104 on December 30th 2014