This year marks the centenary of Swedish screen icon Greta Garbo's birth. In preparation for the Garbo conference and screenings in September, Gwenda Young provides an outline of Garbo's career.

The American director Clarence Brown once said of Greta Garbo that she had 'something behind the eyes that you couldn't see until you photographed it in close-up. You could see thought'. Brown's assessment offers us an insight into Garbo's acting style; a style that seems uniquely filmic in its understated, thoughtful approach to the expression of emotion, and hints at the enduring allure of 'The Swedish Sphinx'.

2005 marks the centenary of the birth of Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, who was transformed by the power of movies into one of the enduring icons of the twentieth century, Greta Garbo. Born into a working class home in Stockholm on September 18th, 1905, Greta seemed destined for the same life as her mother's: an early marriage, children, and poverty. That Greta pursued another life, a life centred on individualism and self-expression, was an early indication of her extraordinary self-sufficiency and resolute will.

Following her graduation from public school at the age of 14, Greta found employment as a barbershop 'soap girl' and later as a sales assistant at Stockholm's largest department store, PUB. While working there she was 'discovered'. Her first acting job was in a promotional film for the store, shortly after which she left the company to act in a comedy called Peter the Tramp (Luffar-Petter). The film proved useful in developing Greta's comic talent, while her subsequent training at the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre Academy in Stockholm (1922-3) provided her with technical skills and exposed her to Stockholm's thriving theatre and film scene.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 106.