Actress Hedy Lamarr has died at the age of 86 at her home in Orlando, Florida. Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler in Vienna in 1913, made her first film at the age of 17 before shocking the European film community with the Czech film Ecstasy - which featured a gorgeous and nubile Lamarr swimming naked.
The young Lamarr married an Austrian arms dealer, Fritz Mandel, whom she left after he began collaborating with the Nazis. She made her way to Hollywood via the London stage, where she starred in some of Tinseltown's classic golden era movies including Samson and Delilah and White Cargo. Famously though, Lamarr was considerably more than a pretty face. With a great interest in science, she contributed to the invention of a communications system which was intended for use as means of guiding torpedos by remote control. Though patented, it was never employed for its intended purpose. However, the invention was unearthed again in the 1960's, and became the basis of the invention is still used today by the US military satellite systems. It was at this time that Lamarr's star began to wane, but she captured the public's imagination once again in 1966 with her racy autobiography Ecstasy and Me - though she later sued the ghost-writer, claiming that some incidents related were a little too racy, and that certain truths had been distorted. Married six times, she had two children and one adoptive son and in recent years lived quietly in Florida - apart from two arrests for shoplifting in the 1980's. Not one to suffer fools, Hedy was an intellect and a realist. Concerning her profession as an actress and star she quipped, "Any girl can look glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid." Hedy Lamarr 1913 - 2000