Russian actress and filmmaker Alla Nazimova was BOTD in 1879. Born Marem-Ides Leventon in the Crimea, she had a turbulent childhood, growing up in foster homes and boarding schools following her parents’ divorce. As a teenager, she moved to Moscow, studying with famed director Konstantin Stanislavski and adopting the name Nazimova. She became a major theatre star in Russia, celebrated for her work in the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov and Ivan Turgenev. In 1905, she and her lover Pavel Orlenev moved to New York, where they established a Russian-language theatre, helping popularise the new naturalism of Ibsen and Chekhov for American audiences. Learning English in just five months, she became a major Broadway star, impressing even the notoriously critical Dorothy Parker. In 1917, she negotiated a film contract with MGM, starring in several popular silent films and also working as a director, producer, screenwriter, editor, and lighting and costume designer. After the commercial failure of her silent film Salomé, based on Oscar Wilde’s play, she left Hollywood and returned to her stage career in New York. After a brief marriage to fellow actor Sergei Golovin, she maintained a lavender marriage for many years with the closeted gay actor Charles Bryant, allowing each of them to pursue affairs with others. Her lovers included Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova (who both subsequently married Rudolph Valentino), Eva Le Gallienne, Dorothy Arzner, Mercedes de Acosta, Dolly Wilde and Bridget Tichenor, and a long-term relationship with Glesca Marshall. She is also thought to have coined the term “Sewing Circle” to describe an underground network of lesbian and bisexual actresses in Hollywood, whom she hosted at intimate parties at her Sunset Boulevard mansion. She died in 1945 aged 66. She has been portrayed many times onscreen, notably by Leslie Caron in Ken Russell’s film Valentino and by Sherilyn Fenn in Silent Life.