Vandamm Studio · Public domain

Rainer was the first performer to win back-to-back Academy Awards, for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937) — a role in which MGM cast her, over the studio's objections, as a poor Chinese farm wife. She had already been a distinguished stage actress in Vienna under Max Reinhardt before Hollywood signed her at 25 hoping she'd become the next Greta Garbo. She largely left the film industry not long after, and at her death in 2014, thirteen days short of 105, she was the longest-lived Oscar winner in history.