Mary Astor, born Lucile Langhanke in Quincy, Illinois in 1906, was an only child.   Her father was a high school German teacher.

She was home-schooled and won several beauty contests before becoming a model in New York City.

In 1922, at the age of 16, she appeared in her first credited role in a feature-length silent film for Selznick Pictures.   Astor went on to appear in more than 120 feature films through 1964 and received the Academy Award for Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in The Great Lie (1941).

She struggled with alcoholism for most of her life and was committed to a psychiatric hospital in the late 1940s.   After emerging, she converted to Roman Catholicism and began to appear as a television series guest star through the early 1960s.

Astor was married four times:

1. Kenneth Hawks, film director, 1928-1930.   Widowed after her husband perished in a plane crash, she later suffered a nervous breakdown.
2. Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, surgeon, 1931-1936, one child, divorced. Thorpe was one of her attending physicians after her mental collapse.   They later went through a bitter child custody battle.
3. Manuel del Campo, insurance salesman, 1936-1941, one child, divorced.
4. Thomas Wheelock, stockbroker, 1945-1955, divorced.   During this period, Astor was committed to an alcohol treatment center and attempted suicide several times.   She later recounted these events in two best-selling autobiographies.

She died of complications from emphysema in Los Angeles, in 1987, at the age of 81.