Joan Crawford was an American film and television actress who began her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting as a chorus girl on Broadway. Crawford then signed a motion picture contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925; her career spanned six decades, multiple studios, and controversies.At different stages of her career, she was noted for her diverse roles playing sympathetic and unsympathetic characters, and for realistic yet multi-layered performances. Her greatest success and most popular performances came from romance and melodrama films, but her filmography also included roles ranging in genres from film noir, historical costume dramas, mysteries, musicals, suspense, horror, westerns and comedies. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.