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Greta Garbo in Stockholm, Sweden, the youngest of three children born to Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871-1920) and Anna Lovisa Johansson (1872-1944). Her older sister and brother were Alva and Sven.

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When Greta was 14, her father, to whom she was extremely close, died, and her relationship with her mother was, at best, strained. Consequently, she was forced to leave school and go to work. Her first job was as a lather girl in a barbershop. She then became a clerk in the department store PUB in Stockholm, where she would also model for newspaper advertisements. Her first motion picture aspirations came when she appeared in a group of advertising short films for the department store where she worked, eventually seen by comedy director Eric Petscher. He cast her in a bit part for his upcoming film (1922) (although her major motion picture debut was a year earlier in a low-budget film).

From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. While she was there, she met director Mauritz Stiller. He trained her in cinema acting technique and cast her in a major role in . She starred in two movies in Sweden and one in Germany (Die Freudlose Gasse -- The Joyless Street -- also notable for a brief appearance by Marlene Dietrich in a food line).

When Stiller went to the United States in 1925 to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he insisted that Garbo be given a contract as well. But their relationship came to an end as her fame grew. He was fired by MGM and returned to Sweden in 1928, where he died soon after.

Throughout this period, Garbo was slowly emerging as a Galatea molded by a series of corporate Pygmalions. In photographs and films one can see her change from a pudgy shopgirl, through various metamorphoses as she enters the studio machinery, until she turns into the perfect Sphinx, the "face" captured in famous pictures by Steichen and Clarence Bull and other photographers of the period.

(1927). She starred in the latter two with the popular leading man John Gilbert. Her name was linked with his in a much publicized romance, and she was said to have left him standing at the altar when she changed her mind about getting married. The actress reportedly had several lesbian or bisexual lovers, including Louise Brooks and the writersocialite Mercedes de Acosta. She also had an on-and-off affair with the primarily homosexual British photographer Cecil Beaton, to whom she was briefly engaged, and who writes about his somewhat requited passion for her in his published diaries.

Having achieved enormous success as a silent movie star, she was one of the few who made the transition to talkies. She delayed as long as possible, and the studio worried endlessly about whether the world was ready for a talking Swedish Sphinx. Her low, husky voice with Swedish accent was heard on screen for the first time in Eugene O'Neill's (1930), which was publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks." The movie was a huge success, but Garbo personally hated her performance.

Unfortunately, her one-time fiancé, John Gilbert, whose popularity was waning, did not fare as well after the advent of sound, due to the high pitch and thinness of his voice, and his career faltered. His last appearance with Garbo, in , was not as bad as some critics have suggested: he suffered from the problem all of Garbo's leading men suffered, which was that she was inevitably stronger and more powerful than they were. Gilbert, John Barrymore, Fredric March, Robert Taylor and others ended up like feeble drones worshipping before the queen bee. Clark Gable was more than a match for Garbo, but she made only one early film with him, .

When she was filmed, if something happened that she was not pleased with she would say, "I think I'll go back to Sweden!" This would frighten the movie studio heads, who gave in to her every wish. She was known for always having a closed set to all visitors. No one could watch as her scenes were shot. Garbo appeared very seductive as the World War I spy in the title role of (1932). The censors complained about her revealing outfit shown on the movie poster. She was next part of an all-star cast in (1932), which won the Best Picture Oscar and featured Garbo as a Russian ballerina melodramatically delivering the line "I want to be alone" (she and Joan Crawford did not get along on that film set). Her co-star was John Barrymore, among the other all-stars, including Lionel Barrymore.

She then had a contract dispute with MGM and did not appear on the screen for almost two years. They finally settled and she signed a new contract, which granted her almost total control over her movies. She exercised that control by getting her leading man on (1934), Laurence Olivier, replaced with Gilbert. David O. Selznick wanted her cast as the dying heiress in has its moments, it also has the "glorious airless fishbowl" quality of many MGM epics of the period.

Her performance as the doomed courtesan in (1936) was called the finest ever recorded on film. Her death scene with Robert Taylor was particularly memorable. She then starred opposite Melvyn Douglas in the comedy (1939) directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

Garbo was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for

Greta Garbo was considered one of the most glamorous movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s. She was also famous for shunning publicity, which became part of the Garbo mystique. Her famous byline was always said to be: spoken with a heavy accent which made the word 'want' sound like 'vont'. This quote as noted comes from her role in , however Garbo commented later, "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is all the difference." Except at the very beginning of her career, she granted no interviews, signed no autographs, attended no premieres and answered no fan mail. According to private letters released in Sweden in 2005 to mark the centenary of her birth, she was reclusive in part because she was self-obsessed, depressive, and ashamed of her latrine-cleaner father. They also show that Garbo remained single in the United States because of an unrequited love for her drama school sweetheart, the Swedish actress Mimi Pollak (see[[1]]).

was a successful attempt at lightening Garbo's image and making her less exotic, complete with the insertion of a scene in a restaurant which her character breaks into joyful laughter which subsequently provided the film with its famous tagline, "Garbo laughs!"

A follow-up film, (1941), attempted to capitalize by casting Garbo in a romantic comedy, where she would play a double role that also featured her dancing, and tried to make her into "an ordinary girl". The film, directed by George Cukor, was a failure. It was Garbo's last screen appearance.

It is often reported that Garbo chose to retire from cinema after this film's failure, but already by 1935 she was becoming more choosy about her roles, and eventually years passed without her agreeing to do another film. By her own admission, Garbo felt that after World War II the world changed, perhaps forever.

In 1949, Garbo filmed a screen test as she considered reentering the movie business, but otherwise never stepped in front of a movie camera again. There were suggestions that she might appear as the "Duchess de Guermantes" in a film adaptation of Marcel Proust's but this never came to fruition. She withdrew from the entertainment world completely and moved to a secluded life in New York City, refusing to make any public appearances. Up until her death, Garbo sightings were considered sport for paparazzi photographers.

Garbo felt her movies had their proper place in history and would gain in value. On February 9, 1951, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1954 she was awarded a special Academy Award for her unforgettable performances. In the mid-1950s, she bought a seven room apartment in New York at 450 East 52nd Street, where she lived for the rest of her life.

She would at times jet-set with some of the world's best known personalities such as Aristotle Onassis, but chose to live a private life. She spent time gardening flowers and vegetables and was known for taking walks through New York streets dressed casually and wearing large sunglasses, always avoiding prying eyes, the paparazzi and media attention.

Garbo lived the last years of her life in absolute seclusion. She had invested very wisely, was known for extreme frugality, and was a very wealthy woman. It is rumored that she wrote an autobiography just before her death but this book has yet to be published if it exists.

She died at age 84 as a result of renal failure in New York and was cremated. She had previously been operated and treated for breast cancer, which she apparently overcame. She left her entire estate to her niece, Gray Reisfeld (Mrs. Donald Reisfeld), and nothing for her elderly companion with whom she lived for many years, Claire.

Her ashes are buried at the Skogskyrkogården Cemetery in Stockholm, Sweden.

Greta Garbo has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

In September 2005, as part of a series of stamps issued to commemorate movie stars, the U.S. Postal Service released a stamp showing Garbo, honoring her enduring status as a film icon.

Although most of Garbo's films were released to home video in the VHS format, DVD release of her work, both in North America and elsewhere, has been slow in coming with only a few releases prior to 2005: