MARY ASTOR Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

Biography » actors and actresses » mary astor

MARY ASTOR

Name: Mary Astor                                                                   
Birth name: Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke                                         
Born: 3 May 1906 Quincy, Illinois, U.S.                                           
Died: 25 September 1987 Woodland Hills, California, U.S.                           
                                                                                   
Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an Academy Award-winning       
American actress. Most famous for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The         
Maltese Falcon (1941) opposite Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion       
picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s.             
                                                                                   
She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost saw her         
career destroyed due to public scandal in the mid-1930s. She was sued for         
support by her parents and was later branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband 
during a custody fight over her daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in     
her private life, Astor went on to even greater success on the screen,             
eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her           
portrayal of Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie (1941). Director Lindsay Anderson       
said of her: "...that when two or three who love the cinema are gathered           
together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she   
was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality         
always seemed to illuminate the parts she played." She continued to act in         
movies, on television and on stage into the 1960s. She retired from the screen     
in 1964.                                                                           
                                                                                   
Astor was also the author of five novels. Her autobiography became a bestseller,   
as did her later book, A Life on Film, which was specifically about her career.