Bette Davis

Born: April 5 1908
Where: Lowell, Massachussetts, USA

Died: October 6 1989, Neuilly, France (breast cancer)

The two-time Academy Award-winning actress distinquished her career with a willingness to play unsympathetic characters.

Highlights included her portrayal of doomed actress Margo Channing in All About Eve and a vengeful former child star in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

The daughter of a housewife-turned-photographer and a patent lawyer, Davis moved to New York with her divorced mother aged six.

She was inspired to become an actress after seeing Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Mary Pickford in Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Davis auditioned for admission to Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory, but was rejected by LeGallienne who described her attitude as "insincere" and "frivolous".

However, she was accepted by the John Murray Anderson School of Theatre (where Lucille Ball was also a pupil), and studied dance with Martha Graham.

After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful.

She joined Warner Brothers in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances.

George Arliss chose Davis for the lead female role in 1932's The Man Who Played God and for the rest of her life Davis credited him with helping her achieve her "break" in Hollywood.

After more than twenty film parts, the role of the vicious and slatternly Mildred Rogers in W Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage earned Davis her first major critical acclaim.

She also made cinema history when she - after a public outcry - she became the only candidate not officially nominated for an award.

The following year she landed a best actress Oscar for Dangerous as a troubled actress.

However, she subsequently became convinced that her career was being damaged by a succession of mediocre films.

She accepted an offer in 1936 to appear in two films in England but was pursued by Warners who launched a legal bid to ensure she honoured her contract.

Davis lost the case and returned to Hollywood, in debt and without income, but immediately enjoyed success playing a hooker in Marked Woman.

During the filming of her next film, Jezebel, Davis entered a relationship with the director, William Wyler.

She later described him as the "love of my life", and said that making the film with him was "the time in my life of my most perfect happiness".

The film was a success, and Davis's performance as a spoiled Southern Belle earned her a second Academy Award.

By the late 1930s, Davis was Warner Brother's most successful actress and attracted another Academy Award nomination for Dark Victory in 1939.

She appeared in three other box office hits in 1939, The Old Maid with Miriam Hopkins, Juarez with Paul Muni and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Errol Flynn.

All This and Heaven Too was the most financially successful film of Davis's career to that point, while The Letter was considered "one of the best pictures of the year" by the Hollywood Reporter.

In January 1941, Davis became the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but antagonized the committee members with her brash manner and radical proposals.

In 1941, William Wyler directed Davis in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, but they clashed over the interpretation of the character, Regina Giddens, and although she received an Oscar nod, never worked with Wyler again.

During World War II, Davis acted with honour, raising war bonds and creating the Hollywood Canteen where celebrities performed for the troops.

She also appeared in the 1942 "women's movie" Now, Voyager but the following year was marred by tragedy when he second husband Arthur Farnsworth died following a fall.

Her next appearance in Mr Skeffington was notable for her erratic behaviour - yet she still landed another Academy Award nomination.

However, her subsequent career with Warners was undistinguished and she was released from her contract in 1949 after her derided performance in Beyond The Forest.

Unattached to a studio, she accepted the role of aging theatrical actress, Margo Channing, in All About Eve.

Critics responded positively to Davis's Oscar-nominated performance and several of her lines became well known, particularly, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

However, few of Davis's films of the 1950s were successful and many of her performances were condemned by critics.

Yet she again bucked the trend when she received her final Academy Award nomination for her 1962 role as Baby Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane opposite Joan Crawford.

Director Robert Aldrich explained that Davis and Crawford were each aware of how important the film was to their respective careers and commented: "It's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly".

Davis sustained her comeback over the course of several years with the crime drama Dead Ringer and the romantic drama Where Love Has Gone based on a Harold Robbins novel.

By the end of the decade, Davis had also appeared in the British films The Nanny (1965), The Anniversary (1968), and Connecting Rooms (1970), but her career again stalled.

In 1977, Davis became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Her name became well known to a younger audience, when Kim Carnes's song Bette Davis Eyes became a worldwide hit and the highest selling record of 1981 in the US.

In 1983, after filming the pilot episode for the television series Hotel, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy.

Davis's final completed role in 1987's The Whales of August (1987) brought her acclaim and she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than one hundred film, television and theater roles to her credit.

In 1999, Davis was placed second, behind Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of all time.