Greta Garbo [ a ] (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson ; [ b ] 18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish and American [ 1 ] actress. She was a premier star during Hollywood’s silent and early golden eras . Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses of all time, she is known for her melancholic and somber screen persona, her film portrayals of tragic characters, and her subtle and understated performances. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema . Garbo launched her career with a secondary role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gösta Berling . Her performance caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer , chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She stirred interest with her first American silent film, Torrent (1926). Garbo’s performance in Flesh and the Devil (1926), her third movie in the United States, made her an international star. [ 2 ] In 1928, Garbo starred in A Woman of Affairs , which catapulted her to MGM’s highest box-office star, surpassing the long-reigning Lillian Gish . Other well-known Garbo films from the silent era are The Mysterious Lady (1928), The Single Standard (1929), and The Kiss (1929). With Garbo’s first sound film, Anna Christie (1930), MGM marketers enticed the public with the tagline “Garbo talks!” That same year she starred in Romance and for her performances in both films she received her first combined nomination out of three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress . [ 3 ] By 1932 her success allowed her to dictate the terms of her contracts and she became increasingly selective about her roles. She continued in films such as Mata Hari (1931), Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), Queen Christina (1933), and Anna Karenina (1935). Many critics and film historians consider her performance as the doomed courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1936) to be her finest and the role gained her a third Academy Award nomination. However, Garbo’s career soon declined and she became one of many stars labelled box office poison in 1938. Her career revived with a turn to comedy in Ninotchka (1939), which earned her a fourth Academy Award nomination. Two-Faced Woman (1941), a box-office flop , was the last of her 28 feature films. Following this commercial failure, she continued to be offered movie roles, though she declined most of them. Those she did accept failed to materialize, either due to lack of funds or because she dropped out during filming. In 1954, Garbo was awarded an Academy Honorary Award “for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances”. [ 4 ] Over time, Garbo would decline all opportunities to return to the screen. In her retirement, she shunned publicity, led a private life, and became an art collector whose paintings included works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Pierre Bonnard and Kees van Dongen . [ 5 ] Although she refused throughout her life to talk to friends about her reasons for retiring, four years before her death, she told Swedish biographer Sven Broman: “I was tired of Hollywood. I did not like my work. There were many days when I had to force myself to go to the studio … I really wanted to live another life.” [ 6 ] Greta Lovisa Gustafsson [ 7 ] was born in Södermalm , Stockholm, Sweden at 7:30 p.m. [ 8 ] She was the third, and youngest, child of Anna Lovisa (née Karlsson, 1872–1944), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871–1920), a laborer. [ 9 ] [ 10 ] She had an older brother, Sven Alfred (1898–1967), and an older sister, Alva Maria (1903–1926). [ 11 ] Garbo was nicknamed Kata, which was how she had mispronounced her first name, for the first ten years of her life. [ 8 ] Her parents met in Stockholm , where her father had been visiting from Frinnaryd . He moved to Stockholm to become independent and worked as a street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and butcher’s assistant. [ 12 ] He married Anna, who moved from Högsby . [ 13 ] [ 14 ] The family was impoverished and lived in a three-bedroom cold-water flat at Blekingegatan No. 32. They raised their three children in a working-class district regarded as the city’s slum. [ 15 ] Garbo later recalled: It was eternally grey—those long winter’s nights. My father would be sitting in a corner, scribbling figures on a newspaper. On the other side of the room, my mother is repairing ragged old clothes, sighing. We children would be talking in very low voices, or just sitting silently. We were filled with anxiety, as if there were danger in the air. Such evenings are unforgettable for a sensitive girl, but also for a girl like me. Where we lived, all the houses and apartments looked alike, their ugliness matched by everything surrounding us. [ 16 ] Garbo was a shy daydreamer as a child. [ 17 ] She disliked school [ 18 ] [ 19 ] and preferred to play alone.
Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Garbo