American singer and actress Eartha Kitt was BOTD in 1927. Born in the town of North in South Carolina, she was abandoned by her mother in early childhood and raised in Harlem. She had a turbulent upbringing, marked by poverty and physical and sexual abuse. At 16, she joined Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe, touring the Americas and Europe, eventuality settling in Paris, where she became a popular nightclub singer. In 1950, Orson Welles cast her as Helen of Troy in a theatrical adaptation of Faust, famously calling her “the most exciting woman in the world”. With successful recordings of songs C’est Si Bon, Santa Baby and I Want to Be Evil, Kitt became a star, admired for her sultry vocal style and witty onstage presence. She is best known for playing Catwoman in the 1960s TV series Batman, becoming one of the first Black sex symbols in American pop culture. In 1968, she attended a White House luncheon, criticising America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. She was placed under surveillance by the CIA who worked to defame her, and her career went into severe decline. Undaunted, she returned to performing in Europe, crediting her many gay fans with helping maintain her career. She made a comeback in the United States with the stage musical Timbuktu! featuring an all-Black cast, and became a cult figure with regular stage, television and film appearances. Active in anti-war and anti-poverty initiatives, she toured South Africa in the early 1980s, publicly criticising the apartheid regime. She was also a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage. In a 1992 interview, she spoke about her gay following, saying “We’re all rejected people, we know what it is to be refused, we know what it is to be oppressed, depressed, and then, accused, and I am very much cognizant of that feeling.” Briefly married to John McDonald in the 1950s, with whom she had a daughter, she is thought to have had affairs with Welles, James Dean, Marlon Brando,  Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, Harry Belafonte, movie studio heir Arthur Loew Jnr and Revlon cosmetics magnate Charlie Revson. She died in 2008, aged 80.