Greta Garbo

GRETA GARBO d1990. Swedish film actress of the 1920-1930s. She launched her career with a secondary role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gosta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B Mayer chief executive of MGM, who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She immediately stirred interest with her first silent film, Torrent (1926) and just a year later, her performance in Flesh and The Devil made her an international star. Her first talking film was Anna Christie (1930) for which MGM marketers enticed the public with the tagline "Garbo talks!" That same year she starred in Romance. For her performances in these films she received the first of three Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. In 1932, her popularity allowed her to dictate the terms of her contract and she became increasingly selective about her roles. Her success continued in films such as Mata Hari (1931) and Grand Hotel (1932). Many critics and film historians consider her performance as the doomed courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1936) to be her finest. The role gained her a second Academy Award nomination. Her career however soon began to decline and she was one of the many stars labelled "Box Office Poison" in 1938. Her career revived upon her turn to comedy in Ninotchka (1939), which earned her a third Academy Award nomination. But after the failure of Two Faced Women (1941), she retired from the screen, at the age of 35, after acting in twenty-eight films. From then on, she declined all opportunities to return to the screen, shunning all publicity and leading a totally private life. From the early days of her career, she had avoided industry social functions, preferring to spend her time alone or with friends. She never signed autographs or answered fan mail and rarely gave interviews. Nor did she ever appear at Oscar ceremonies (even when she was nominated). Her aversion to publicity and the press was undeniably genuine and exasperating to the studio at first. In an interview in 1928, she explained that her desire for privacy began when she was a child, stating "as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds, don't like many people ....." Greta Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an Academy Honorary Award in 1954 for her "luminous and unforgettable screen performances. She became an art collector in her later life. Her collection boasted works from painters including ; Renoir / Bonnard and Van Dongen and was worth millions of dollars at the time of her death. She died aged 84 in hospital on April 15th 1990 of pneumonia. " In 1999, the AFI ranked her fifth on their list of the Greatest Female Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.