Greta Garbo

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born on September 18, 1905, into a working-class family in Södermalm, Stockholm. Working as a department store clerk at PUB and modeling in commercial shorts, she was accepted into the Royal Dramatic Training Academy in 1922.

Discovered by visionary director Mauritz Stiller, who cast her in The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924) and gave her the surname Garbo, she sailed to Hollywood with MGM in 1925. With her incandescent luminescence, arched brows, and haunting emotional reserve, Garbo transitioned triumphantly to sound cinema in Anna Christie ('Garbo talks!') and starred in immortals classics: Grand Hotel, Queen Christina, Camille, and Ninotchka ('Garbo laughs!'). Retiring from cinema at age thirty-six in 1941, she lived a legendary, intensely private life in New York.