Ava Gardner

Ava Lavinia Gardner signed with MGM in 1941 and spent five years in small roles before The Killers in 1946 gave critics a reason to look. The 1950s made her: Show Boat and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman in 1951, then a run of action pictures—The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Mogambo (which earned her an Oscar nomination), The Barefoot Contessa—that locked her in as a leading lady. She closed the decade with On the Beach in 1959, playing the end of the world opposite Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire. She kept working through the '60s, '70s, and '80s—55 Days at Peking, Seven Days in May, The Night of the…