Lauren Bacall

Born: September 1924
Where: USA

The husky-voiced former usherette was spotted by Howard Hawks' wife on the cover of Harper's Bazaar and made an electric debut in films aged 19 in To Have and Have Not.

Bacall subsequently married her co-star - Humphrey Bogart, 25 years her senior - creating a formidable team on and off screen.

A subsequent reteaming with Bogart in Hawks' mesmerising The Big Sleep in 1946 confirmed the team's appeal and showed her starting to hone her powers of characterization as the wealthy, enigmatic Vivian.

Another film opposite Bogart, meanwhile, John Huston's punchy Key Largo, gave her a more vulnerable character whose loyalty showed her suitability in a "man's world".

Like Garbo and Dietrich before her, Bacall's sulky, androgynous beauty made possible an interesting variety of roles.

These ranged from the sexually ambiguous "bad girl" of Young Man with a Horn to the most subdued of three women seeking How to Marry a Millionaire and the distraught wife in Douglas Sirk's striking melodrama Written on the Wind.

Even during her peak decade-plus of screen activity from the mid 1940s to the late 50s, Bacall was sometimes off the screen for several years at a time.

This was generally when she fought with Warner Brothers after rejecting standardized glamour roles or opted to spend time with Bogart and the family they started.

His slow decline in health required a great deal of attention, but her sleek comic grace in the sophisticated comedy Designing Woman, shot during Bogart's last days, was a tribute to her professionalism.

The 60s were a low period for screen activity, but Bacall did keep coming back to appear in such interesting films as Harper.

She raised her children, married actor Jason Robards (they divorced after eight years) and, most rewardingly in a professional sense, turned her energies back to the stage where she had worked briefly as a teen.

In 1974, after an eight year hiatus, Bacall returned to the screen in Murder on the Orient Express, making a smooth transition to playing older women.

One of Bacall's more notable later appearances was in the psychodrama The Fan which, though in many ways unworthy of her, nonetheless showcased her classy yet down-to-earth elegance.

Subsequent movie roles have included turns in Robert Altman's H.E.A.L.T.H., Appointment with Death and Misery.

She reteamed with Altman for Ready to Wear (Pret-a-Porter), suitably cast as a former fashion editor, and was able to work with her actor son Sam Robards.

In 1996, Bacall earned her first Oscar nomination as Barbra Streisand's acerbic mother in the somewhat overblown The Mirror Has Two Faces.

She voiced the animated Madeline: Lost in Paris and appeared in the comedy-mystery Diamonds with Kirk Douglas in 1999.

Subsequent appearances were unmemorable until Lars Von Trier cast her in Dogville and she starred with Nicole Kidman in the supernatural thriller Birth.