Claudette Colbert was a French-born American stage and film actress.Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to motion pictures with the advent of talking pictures. Initially associated with Paramount Pictures, she gradually shifted to working as a freelance actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in It Happened One Night, and received two other Academy Award nominations. Other notable films include Cleopatra and The Palm Beach Story.By the early 1950s, Colbert had basically retired from the screen in favor of television and stage work, and she earned a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career tapered off during the early 1960s, but in the late 1970s she experienced a career resurgence in theater, earning a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. For her television work in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy Award nomination.In 1999, the American Film Institute voted Colbert the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.