Tallulah Bankhead

American stage and screen actress who was celebrated from the 1920s for her electric and throaty performances, as well as a lusty life-style offstage. Starring in London from 1923, her performances on-stage and off made her the toast of the town for seven years. Her fame as an actress was ensured in 1924 when she played Amy in Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted. The show won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize.

Upon returning to the USA in 1931, she resumed her stage career and signed a film contract with Paramount. Her film and TV work were less memorable than her stage performances. However, Bankhead achieved an award-winning performance in at least one film—Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) —and made a brief but successful career on radio. She later made appearances on television as well. During her career, Bankhead amassed nearly 300 film, stage, television and radio roles.

Her 1932 movie Devil and the Deep is notable for the presence of three major co-stars, with Bankhead's receiving top billing over Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, and Cary Grant; it is the only film with Cooper and Grant as the film's leading men. She later said "Dahling, the main reason I accepted [the part] was to fuck that divine Gary Cooper!"

In 1933, while performing on Broadway in Jezebel, Bankhead nearly died following a five-hour emergency hysterectomy due to gonorrhea, which she claimed she had contracted from George Raft. Weighing only 70 lb (32 kg) when she left the hospital, she vowed to continue her promiscuous and party lifestyle, stoically saying to her doctor "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!"

Her brilliant portrayal of the cold and ruthless, yet fiery Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes (1939) won her Variety magazine's award for Best Actress of the Year.

Bankhead's autobiography, Tallulah, was published in 1952. Though her career slowed in the mid-1950s, she never faded from the public eye.