Claudette Colbert, French-American actress (born 1903)

Claudette Colbert was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially contracted to Paramount Pictures, Colbert became one of the few major actresses of the period who worked freelance; that is to say, independently of the studio system. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Colbert the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.