Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in New York on September 16, 1924.

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, Bacall says of her life with Bogart: “No one has ever written a romance better than we lived it.”

Lauren Bacall was widowed at the age of 31 when Bogart passed away. She had an ill-fated affair with Frank Sinatra, and a marriage to Jason Robards Jr. in 1961 that failed to work, divorcing eight years later.

In 1988 she was reported in The Daily Telegraph as saying: “I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”