
Claudette Colbert was a French-American stage and film actress, and a leading lady for two decades.
Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures. Initially associated with Paramount Pictures, later gradually Colbert shifted to a freelance actor. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in It Happened One Night, and also received Academy Award nominations in Private Worlds and Since You Went Away. With her round apple-face, Colbert was known as the expert screwball comedienne, and forged a decent film career for herself in versatility playing characters that ranged from vamps to housewives that encompassed melodrama, led to her becoming the industry's biggest box-office star in 1938 and 1942. During her successful career, Colbert played in more than sixty movies.
At the mid 1950s she largely retired from the screen in favour of television and stage work, earning a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career tapered off during the early 1960s, but in the late 1970s, she experienced a career resurgence on theater, earning a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theatre work in 1980. Also for television work in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy Award nomination.