Swedish actress Greta Garbo was BOTD in 1905. Born in Stockholm to a working-class family, she left school at 13, working to support her family. She became a fashion model, catching the attention of theatre director Erik Petschler. After studying at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm, she became a star of Swedish and German silent cinema. In 1925, she was invited to Hollywood and recruited by MGM. She became a colossal star, revolutionising film acting by underplaying her gestures and facial expressions, and dazzling audiences with her beauty, mystique and nonchalant sex appeal. She was frequently paired with American actor John Gilbert, with whom she had an off-screen affair. She transitioned successfully to talking films, scoring hits in Anna Christie, Mata Hari and Grand Hotel, in which she spoke her signature line “I want to be alone”. In Queen Christina, she starred as the real-life Swedish monarch, shocking audiences by dressing as a man and kissing her female co-star. She is best known as the dying courtesan in George Cukor‘s melodrama Camille, widely considered her greatest performance. Her popularity waned by the late 1930s, despite a witty comeback as a Russian intelligence agent in Ernst Lubitsch’s rom-com Ninotchka. After being critically savaged in the 1941 comedy Two-Faced Woman, she left Hollywood, living quietly in New York City and avoiding publicity. In 1954 she was awarded an honorary Oscar. (Inevitably, she skipped the ceremony and the statuette was mailed to her). Garbo never married or had children, and had affairs with men and women, including novelist Erich Maria Remarque, the photographer Cecil Beaton, actresses Louise Brooks and Veronica Lake and the writer Mercedes de Acosta. The publication of de Acosta’s tell-all memoir Here Lies the Heart in 1960 offended Garbo deeply, ending their friendship. Garbo died in 1990, aged 84. Now considered one of the greatest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, her Sphinx-like charisma lives on in the work of Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Tilda Swinton.