Janet Leigh

Jeanette Morrison was working-class Stockton until Norma Shearer spotted her at 18 and landed her an MGM contract. Through the late '40s and early '50s she cycled through dramas, Westerns, swashbucklers—solid studio work, nothing that stuck. She married Tony Curtis in 1951, left MGM in '54, and kept moving: Touch of Evil with Welles in '58, then the call from Hitchcock. Psycho arrived in 1960 and turned her into something else entirely. Marion Crane's death in that shower—brutal, brief, unforgettable—won her a Golden Globe, an Oscar nomination, and permanent scream queen status. She divorced C…