BACALL, LAUREN

BACALL, LAUREN (Betty Joan Perske; 1924– ), U.S. actress. Born in New York, Bacall studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then turned to modeling. She was featured on the cover of Harper's Bazaar and within one month had a Hollywood contract. At the age of 19, Bacall co-starred in her first film with Humphrey Bogart, whom she married one year later (1945). Bacall made four of her first films with Bogart – To Have And Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948). She also appeared in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Woman's World (1954), The Cobweb (1955), Blood Alley (1955), and Designing Woman (1957). After Bogart died in 1957, Bacall continued her career in films, which spanned more than half a century and included performances in Written on the Wind (1956), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Harper (1966), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Shootist (1976), The Fan (1981), Health (1982), Appointment with Death (1988), Mr. North (1988), Tree of Hands (1989), Misery (1990), A Star for Two (1991), Ready to Wear (Pret a Porter) (1995), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), My Fellow Americans (1996), Diamonds (1999), The Venice Project (1999), Presence of Mind (1999), The Limit (2003), Dogville (2003), and Birth (2004). In 1961 Bacall married actor Jason Robards, Jr. They divorced in 1969. Their son, Sam Robards, is a film and TV actor. Bacall won a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway musical Applause (1970). In 1997 she was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress in The Mirror Has Two Faces. That same year People magazine chose her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. Her autobiography, Lauren Bacall by Myself, won a National Book Award in 1980. In 1994 she wrote a book entitled Now, which is described as "part career memoir and part meditation on what it's like to be a single woman of lingering glamour, enduring vitality, and advancing age." (Jonathan Licht / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)