Ava Lavinia Gardner was born into a poor family of cotton farmers on Christmas Eve, 1922. When she was 18, her brother-in-law displayed a photo of her in the window of his studio; it caught the eye of an MGM executive, and the stunning green-eyed brunette was on her way to stardom.
Ava enjoyed a successful film career, most notably starring in The Sun Also Rises and Mogambo, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She was married three times; her final marriage to Frank Sinatra was the longest, but it was also the most tumultuous. Her reputation as a strong, sexy screen siren was compounded by the fact that she was consistently more successful than the men in her life.
A lifelong smoker, she lost her battle with emphysema in 1990 at the age of 67. And even though it was more than 30 years after their divorce, it is said that Frank Sinatra was so wracked with grief over her death that his daughter discovered him slumped in a room, crying, and unable to speak.
Ava's look is the epitome of classic glamour. To see how to recreate it for yourself at home, read more
