The most beautiful golden age actresses
by Jelena_Rovcanin | created - 07 Jan 2011 | updated - 03 Jan 2018 | Public"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" Therefore, I have made a list according to my views on beauty. Please feel free to leave a comment if you think someone should be on this list (I update it constantly), and don't get offended if your favorite actress isn't on this list.
1. Gene Tierney
Actress | Laura
With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting ...
2. Brigitte Bardot
Actress | Le mépris
Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance, and she proved to be very adept at it. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was ...
3. Grace Kelly
Actress | Dial M for Murder
On November 12, 1929, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to wealthy parents. Her girlhood was uneventful for the most part, but one of the things she desired was to become an actress which she had decided on at an early age. After her high school graduation in 1947, Grace ...
4. Marilyn Monroe
Actress | Some Like It Hot
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and ...
5. Rita Hayworth
Actress | Gilda
Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of dancers. Her father, Eduardo Cansino Reina, was a dancer as was his father before him. He emigrated from Spain in 1913. Rita's American mother, Volga Margaret (Hayworth), who was of mostly ...
6. Lana Turner
Actress | Madame X
Lana Turner had an acting ability that belied the "Sweater Girl" image MGM thrust upon her, and even many of her directors admitted that they knew she was capable of greatness (check out The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)). Unfortunately, her private life sometimes overshadowed her professional ...
7. Joan Bennett
Actress | Suspiria
Joan Geraldine Bennett was born on February 27, 1910, in Palisades, New Jersey. Her parents were both successful stage actors, especially her father, Richard Bennett, and often toured the country for weeks at a time. In fact, Joan came from a long line of actors, dating back to the 18th century. ...
8. Vivien Leigh
Actress | A Streetcar Named Desire
If a film were made of the life of Vivien Leigh, it would open in India just before World War I, where a successful British businessman could live like a prince. In the mountains above Calcutta, a little princess is born. Because of the outbreak of World War I, she is six years old the first time ...
9. Veronica Lake
Actress | Sullivan's Travels
Veronica Lake was born as Constance Frances Marie Ockleman on November 14, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Constance Charlotta (Trimble) and Harry Eugene Ockelman, who worked for an oil company as a ship employee. Her father was of half German and half Irish descent, and her ...
10. Natalie Wood
Actress | Rebel Without a Cause
Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.
Wood was born July 20, 1938 in ...
11. Audrey Hepburn
Actress | Breakfast at Tiffany's
Audrey Hepburn was born as Audrey Kathleen Ruston on May 4, 1929 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. Her mother, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman, while her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was born in Úzice, Bohemia, to English and Austrian parents.
After her parents' divorce, ...
12. Janet Leigh
Actress | Psycho
Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and...
13. Eleanor Parker
Actress | The Sound of Music
Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She was was so serious about becoming an actor, that she attended the Rice Summer ...
14. Faye Dunaway
Actress | Bonnie and Clyde
An icy, elegant blonde with a knack for playing complex and strong-willed female leads, enormously popular actress Faye Dunaway starred in several films which defined what many would come to call Hollywood's "second Golden Age." During her tenure at the top of the box office, she was a more than ...
15. Hedy Lamarr
Actress | Samson and Delilah
Hedy Lamarr, the woman many critics and fans alike regard as the most beautiful ever to appear in films, was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Gertrud (Lichtwitz), from Budapest, and Emil Kiesler, a banker from Lemberg (now known as Lviv). Her parents were ...
16. Maureen O'Hara
Actress | The Quiet Man
In America, the early performing arts accomplishments of young Maureen FitzSimons (who we know as Maureen O'Hara) would definitely have put her in the child prodigy category. However, for a child of Irish heritage surrounded by gifted parents and family, these were very natural traits. Maureen made...
17. Elizabeth Taylor
Actress | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked ...
18. Greta Garbo
Actress | Ninotchka
Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and ...
19. Jeanne Crain
Actress | Pinky
Jeanne Crain was born in Barstow, California, on May 25, 1925. The daughter of a high school English teacher and his wife, Jeanne was moved to Los Angeles not long after her birth after her father got another teaching position in that city. While in junior high school, Jeanne played the lead in a ...
20. Gail Russell
Actress | The Uninvited
Gail Russell was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 21, 1924. She remained in the Windy City, going to school until her parents moved to California when she was 14. She was an above-average student in school and upon graduation from Santa Monica High School was signed by Paramount Studios.
...
21. Jeanne Moreau
Actress | Jules et Jim
When people gave Louis Malle credit for making a star of Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) immediately followed by The Lovers (1958), he would point out that Moreau by that time had already been "recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation." She had made it to the Comédie ...
22. Anne Shirley
Actress | Murder, My Sweet
They didn't come packaged any sweeter or lovelier than Anne Shirley, a gentle and gracious 1930s teen film actress who didn't quite reach the zenith of front-rank stardom and retired all too soon at age 26. On film as a toddler, she went through a small revolving door of marquee names before ...
23. Jane Greer
Actress | Out of the Past
As a baby, she was winning beauty contests; as a teenager, with good looks and an attractive contralto voice, she was singing with big bands (most notably Enric Madriguera's orchestra in Latin Club Del Rio in Washington, D.C.. She met Rudy Vallee, her first husband, on the radio where she also ...
24. Ruth Hussey
Actress | The Philadelphia Story
A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Drama, Ruth Hussey's first show-business job was as a fashion commentator on a local radio station. She journeyed to New York City, where she was signed as a model by the world-famous Powers agency. She obtained some stage roles with touring ...
25. Greta Gynt
Actress | Take My Life
Glamourous, blonde, Norwegian actress who added a sparkle to British movies.
Greta Gynt usually played a leading part, and remained at the top of the British cinema from the late 1930s through to the 40s. An opportunity for Greta to experience a Hollywood career came in the early 1950s, but it was ...
26. Claudette Colbert
Actress | It Happened One Night
One of the brightest film stars to grace the screen was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin on September 13, 1903, in Saint Mandé, France where her father owned a bakery at 57, rue de la République (now Avenue Général de Gaulle). The family moved to the United States when she was three. As Claudette ...
27. Gloria Grahame
Actress | In a Lonely Place
Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944)...
28. Priscilla Lane
Actress | Arsenic and Old Lace
Priscilla Lane attended the Eagin School of Dramatic Arts in New York before she began touring with her sisters in the Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians Dance Band. She was a popular singer with her sisters and, after 5 years, she was signed to a Hollywood contract with Warner Brothers in 1937. ...
29. Carole Landis
Actress | I Wake Up Screaming
Carole Landis was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin, as Frances Lillian Mary Ridste. Her father, a railroad mechanic, was of Norwegian descent and her mother was Polish. Her father walked out, leaving Carole, her mother and an older brother and sister to fend for themselves.
...
30. Laura La Plante
Actress | God's Gift to Women
Laura La Plante was 15 years old when she entered films as a Christie Comedy Bathing Beauty. By 1921, she had played a number of roles including a Tom Mix Western called The Big Town Round-Up (1921) for Fox and The Old Swimmin' Hole (1921) for First National. Laura, now 17, next signed with ...
31. Jocelyn Brando
Actress | The Big Heat
Jocelyn Brando, the older sister of Marlon Brando, was born Nov. 18, 1919, in San Francisco, California, to Marlon Brando Sr. and his wife, the former Dorothy Pennebaker. Jocelyn and Marlon and their sister Frances grew up mostly on a farm near Evanston, Illinois, though the family moved around ...
32. Jean Hagen
Actress | Singin' in the Rain
Jean Shirley Verhagen (later shortened to Hagen) was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 3, 1923. Her father was a Dutch immigrant. Hagen and her family moved to Elkhart, Indiana when she was twelve; she subsequently graduated from Elkhart High School. Afterwards, she graduated from Northwestern ...
33. Ellen Drew
Actress | Christmas in July
Missouri-born Ellen Drew was born Esther Loretta Ray in 1914, the daughter of an Irish-born barber. After her parents separated when she was 15 years old, she worked various jobs (accountant, salesgirl) to support her mother and younger brother. At one time she worked at Marshall Field's Department...
34. Susan Harrison
Actress | Sweet Smell of Success
Susan Harrison was born on August 26, 1938 in Leesburg, Florida, USA. She was an actress, known for Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Key Witness (1960) and The Twilight Zone (1959). She was married to Cassius Marcus Conger and Joël Colin. She died on March 5, 2019 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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