Greta Garbo was born September 18, 1905 in Greta Lovisa Gustafsson. She was born in Stockholm to poor parents. She started working at the age of 14, first as a lather girl in a barbershop, then as a clerk in a department store and as a model.

In her first motion picture, Luffar-Petter (1922), she played a bathing beauty. From 1922 to 1924 she studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm. During that period met Mauritz Stiller, the foremost Swedish director, who gave her an important role in Gösta Berlings Saga who gave her the stage name Greta Garbo, and trained her in cinema-acting techniques.


Garbo played seductive WWI spy in Mata Hari (1932). So much so that the censors complained of the revealing outfit shown on the movie poster. Her next film that year was Grand Hotel, with one of the first all star casts. The film earned MGM it’s second Best Picture Oscar.
After almost 2 years off the screen, Garbo signed a new MGM contract granting her almost total control over her films.


She exercised that control by getting leading man Laurence Olivier fired from her film, Queen Christina (1934), and forcing Mayer to replace him with former co-star and lover John Gilbert, who’s career had faltered since the coming of sound.


At age 36, after the flop of her film, Two Faced Woman (1941), Garbo withdrew from the entertainment field and retired to a secluded life in New York City. In 1954 she was awarded a special Academy Award for unforgettable performances.

Garbo died on April 15, 1990, in New York, N.Y. She was one of the most glamorous and popular stars of the motion pictures of the 1920s and '30s.

Garbo had, in the opinion of her directors and most critics, a perfect instinct for doing the right thing before the camera. Her talent, her great beauty, and her indifference to public opinion made her career unique in the history of the cinema.