Gloria Stuart, the 1930s Hollywood beauty who gave up acting for 30 years and later became the oldest Academy Award acting nominee as the spunky survivor in Titanic, has died. She was 100.
Stuart died of respiratory failure on Sunday night at her Los Angeles home, her daughter, Sylvia Thompson, said on Monday. The actress had been diagnosed with lung cancer five-years-ago and had beaten breast cancer about 20-years-ago, Thompson said. “She did not believe in illness. She paid no attention to it, and it served her well,” Thompson said. “She had a great life. I’m not sad. I’m happy for her.” In youth, Stuart was a blond beauty who starred in B pictures as well as some higher-profile ones such as The Invisible Man, Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1935 and two Shirley Temple movies, Poor Little Rich Girl and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. But by the mid-1940s she had retired.
She resumed acting in the 1970s, doing occasional TV and film work, including Peter O’Toole’s 1982 comedy My Favourite Year.