Actress
Luise Rainer, who became the first winner of consecutive Oscars in the
1930s, has died at the age of 104. The
German-born star was named best actress in 1936 and 1937 - a feat achieved by
only five actors in Academy Awards history to date. Her
achievement made her a force in the golden age of Hollywood cinema, but was
also a curse, making her last major film in 1943. Continue...
She
settled in London and made occasional appearances on film and TV.
Rainer
appeared in US small screen series The Loveboat in 1984, while her last
substantial film role came in 1998, playing opposite Michael Gambon and Dominic
West in The Gambler.
The
actress appeared in a number of German films before being talent-spotted by
Hollywood studio MGM and making her debut in 1935.
Just a year later she scooped
an Academy Award for her performance in The Great Ziegfeld, playing the
legendary theatrical impresario's wife.
In one
famous scene, her face was tear-stained as she congratulated
her former husband on his marriage to another actress.
The
following year, her portrayal of a Chinese peasant in The Good Earth won her a
second statuette, at a time when Oscar winners were disclosed some time before
the ceremony.
The
actress told the BBC in 2003 the awards ceremony "was not as
elaborate" as
it is today.
Rainer
later said that "nothing worse could have happened to me," explaining
two awards meant the studio could "throw me into anything".
After
clashing with MGM over a lack of artistic freedom and losing out to Ingrid
Bergman in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls, she broke her contract
with them.
"I was a machine,
practically - a tool in a big, big factory, and I could not do anything. And so
I left. I just went away. I fled. Yes, I fled," she later said in an
interview.
Other
actors to have collected consecutive acting awards are Spencer Tracy, Katharine
Hepburn, Jason Robards and Tom Hanks.
Rainer
was married twice, and second husband Robert Knittel died in 1989 after their
marriage of 44 years.
The
couple had one daughter, Francesca Knittel-Bowyer, who said her mother had died
from pneumonia at her London home.
"She
was bigger than life and could charm the birds out of the trees," she
said. "If you saw her, you'd never forget her.''
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