Lauren Bacall Lauren Bacall Lauren Bacall (, born Betty Joan Perske; September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014) was an American actress known for her distinctive voice and sultry looks. She was named the 20th greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute, and received an Academy Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2009, "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures". Bacall began her career as a model before making her film debut as a leading lady in "To Have and Have Not" (1944). She continued
Lauren Bacall birth, Bacall's family moved to Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway. She was educated with the financial support of her wealthy uncles at a private boarding school founded by philanthropist Eugene Heitler Lehman, named The Highland Manor Boarding School for Girls, in Tarrytown, New York, and at Julia Richman High School in Manhattan. Her parents divorced when she was five; she later took the Romanian form of her mother's last name, Bacall. She no longer saw her father and formed a very close bond with her mother, who remarried Lee Goldberg and came to live in California after Bacall became a movie star.