Kim Hunter

Born: 12 November 1922
Where: Detroit, Michigan, USA
Died: 11 September 2002

Kim started off her screen career in 1943, with a strong performance in The Seventh Victim.

After which she starred in a number of movies, but really made her mark with her role as Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

The film was a major success, starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando in the main parts and it took the Oscars by storm.

Kim herself won the best supporting actress award - a feat she was never able to match throughout the rest of her career.

To blame for her early peak was the fact she was blacklisted during the McCarthy era - even though she was never a Communist or even held pro-Communist views. But as a strong believer in civil rights, she signed a lot of petitions and was a sponsor of a 1949 World Peace Conference in New York.

Referring to being blacklisted, the actress said:

"For a long while, I wouldn't talk about it at all. I do now, because there's a whole new generation that doesn't remember. And the more one knows, the more one can see, and not allow history to repeat itself."

Another of her bigger successes on the silver screen was as Zira in Planet Of The Apes (1968), opposite Charlton Heston.

But Kim has mainly confirmed her calling as an actress on the smaller screen, having concentrated on television work, she worked until the age of 78.