Actress Greta Garbo was born on September 18, 1905, and died on April 15, 1990, in Stockholm, Sweden. She was the youngest of three children in a poor family. She began working in a barbershop at age 13, and at 15, she began working as a sales clerk in a department store. She also worked as a model for the store's advertisements and appeared in promotional short films. This caught the eye of comedian Erik Petschler, who cast her in the 1922 film "Petter the Wanderer." She then studied at drama school for two years, and while there, she met film director Mauritz Stiller. He gave her the stage name Greta Garbo, and she made her film debut in "The Legend of Yesterday." In 1925, together with Stiller, she signed a contract with MGM, a film and television production company. She made her Hollywood debut in 1926 as the heroine in The Torrent of Ibáñez. She subsequently gained popularity starring opposite John Gilbert in The Flesh and the Devil and Anna Karenina. With the advent of the talkie era, her husky voice gained popularity, and she remained a top actress for about a decade. In the 1940s, she lost her former popularity, and retired after appearing in the comedy The Two Faces. From then on, she avoided the media altogether. She received an Honorary Academy Award in 1954, but did not attend the ceremony. She spent her final years in New York, where she died in April 1990 at the age of 84.