Lauren Bacall's Biography
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in New York on September 16, 1924.
At 15, she won a place at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Lauren Bacall was given her first break, aged 19, in the movies by Howard Hawks in To Have and Have Not in 1944. Her first line was "Anybody got a match?".
Bacall starred opposite Humphrey Bogart, whom she was to marry a year later.
The duo were to co-star in a succession of box-office hits, including (also directed by Hawks) The Big Sleep in 1946 and Key Largo in 1948, directed by John Huston.
In her autobiography, By Myself, Lauren Bacall says of her life with Bogart: "No one has ever written a romance better than we lived it."
Lauren Bacall was widowed in her early thirties when Bogart died in January 1957. She went on to have an ill-fated affair with Frank Sinatra, and a marriage to Jason Robards Jr in 1961 that failed to work, divorcing eight years later.
Since her divorce, she has been single. She told The Times on 21 July 2007:
"I would have loved to have found a great guy, but they don't exist any more. Why? Don't ask me. I haven't met anyone I wanted to spend an evening with, much less a life with."
In 2007, Lauren Bacall was cast as a socialite in Paul Schrader's The Walker.
In November 2009, Lauren Bacall received an honorary Oscar. Up to then she had never won an Academy Award although in 1996 she was nominated for The Mirror Has Two Faces.
In August 2014, Lauren Bacall died at the age of 89.
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