Legendary silver screen actress Lauren Bacall has passed away aged 89 after suffering a stroke at her home on Tuesday morning, with the estate of her late husband Humphrey Bogart breaking the news via Twitter.
Born Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx in 1924, she made her Broadway debut in 1942 under the stage name Betty Bacall and became a part-time model before being signed to a seven-year contract by Howard Hawks, who changed her name to Lauren Bacall. She made her feature film debut in 1944’s To Have and Have Not, before appearing alongside Humphrey Bogart for the first time two years later in The Big Sleep.
Bacall would go on to share the screen with Bogart in Dark Passage and Key Largo, while her subsequent films included the likes of How to Marry a Millionaire, Designing Women, Sex and the Single Girl, Harper, Murder of the Orient Express, The Shootist and Misery.
Having won Tony Awards for Applause and Woman of the Year, Bacall earned her first Academy Award nomination for 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces, winning a Golden Globe for her work, while she was presented with an Academy Honorary Award in 2009 “in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures.”
