ANN-MARGRET

Ann-Margret was born Ann-Margret Olsson in Stockholm, Sweden in 1941. She later said her first few years were spent in a small town "of lumberjacks and farmers high up near the Arctic Circle".

When she was five, her family moved to a suburb of Chicago. As a teen she took dance lessons and appeared on some "Amateur Hour" TV shows. She was in stage shows in school and in a singing group during college. The group went to California to perform, and George Burns saw her, and put her in his holiday show, and he became her mentor.

In 1961, she released a solo record album, which had moderate success. Also that year, she was signed to a 7 year contract by 20th Century Fox. After one small part, she was given a major role in the remake of State Fair, playing the "bad girl" (she was just too sexy to play the "good girl"!).

Her next role, as the teenage girl in Bye Bye Birdie, made her a star. She was so popular that a new character, "Ann-Margrock", was added to one episode of the hit TV series, The Flintstones! The studio capitalized on her popularity by rushing her into as many movies as possible.

She made 10 movies in 1964, 1965 and 1966 alone, and the best of these were Viva Las Vegas, opposite Elvis Presley, and The Cincinnati Kid, opposite Steve McQueen. That year, 1965, she met actor Roger Smith, nine years older than her, married, and a father of three.

Her parents naturally didn't like him, but he got divorced, and two years later they married, and they remained married until he passed away in 2017! Her movies became less frequent and more forgettable, although she made a wonderful "comeback" in Carnal Knowledge in 1971.

In 1972, she fell 22 feet from a stage at Lake Tahoe, but recovered completely. She worked steadily in the 1970s and 1980s, and stayed as beautiful as ever (she was able to believably have a romance with "teenager" C. Thomas Howell in 1987's A Tiger's Tale, when she was 46!).

In 1993, she co-starred in the surprise hit, Grumpy Old Men. Many people think of Ann-Margret as a sexy lady who could not act very well, but actually she has won five Golden Globe Awards, and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and five Emmy Awards!

Also, she is one of the most famous redheads of all time, and yet she does not have red hair (it was given to her by the same stylist who gave Lucille Ball her red hair)! As of 2021, she is still alive at the age of 80!