American actress Louise Brooks was BOTD in 1906. Born in Cherryvale, Kansas, she survived a turbulent and abusive childhood, running away to Los Angeles when she was 15 to join a modern dance troupe. After performing in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City, she was spotted by a talent scout and signed with Paramount Pictures, turning heads with lead roles in A Girl in Every Port and Beggars of Life. Her affair with Pepi Lederer, the niece of actress Marion Davies, led to Lederer’s incarceration and suicide. creating a major scandal. Publicly disgraced and dissatisfied to Hollywood, Brooks moved to Berlin in 1929 at the invitation of filmmaker G. W. Pabst, who cast her as amoral good-time girl Lulu in Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box) and a prostitute in Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl). Audiences went wild for Brooks’ naturalistic acting style, free-spirited sexuality and bobbed “flapper” haircut, making her internationally famous and the symbol of female sexual liberation. Returning to Hollywood in 1930, she struggled to find acting roles, returning to Kansas briefly to open a dance school. Settling in New York City in 1943, she lived in poverty and obscurity, supporting herself with sex work and struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicide attempts. Her work was rediscovered in the 1950s by film historians in the 1950s, leading to opportunities to write about her work for film journals. A collection of her essays and reminiscences, Lulu in Hollywood was published in 1982. Brooks had relationships with men and women throughout her life, including affairs with Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo, and cheerfully cultivated her appeal as a lesbian icon. She died in 1985 aged 78. Now considered one of the greatest stars of the silent film era, her screen persona inspired Liza Minnelli’s performance as Sally Bowles in the 1972 musical film Cabaret and Melanie Griffith’s free-spirited Goth-chick in Something Wild.