1Mary Astor
In 1906, Mary Astor planned the release of 10,000 imported Brazilian butterflies at her Debutante ball housed in nets lining the ceiling. They didn't take into account the heat of the lights, and her party ended with 10,000 dead insects showering her party guests.
2Hattie McDaniel
After Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Academy Award for her role in "Gone with the Wind" she was accused of being an Uncle Tom by the NAACP to which she responded that she would "rather make seven hundred dollars a week playing a maid than seven dollars being one."
3Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith continued acting as Professor McGonagall in the last Harry Potter movie in spite of battling cancer because she didn’t want to disappoint fans.
4Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was so slim because from ages 9 to 16 she was severely malnourished during World War 2 in Holland. Among other things, she sustained herself on tulip bulbs.
5Bette Midler
When Bette Midler started her career in the early 1970s, she was the singer in a gay bathhouse in New York often accompanied by Barry Manilow on piano. Manilow produced her first album and patrons of the bath house were her first hardcore fans.
6Halle Berry
Halle Berry refused to shower for 10 days to accurately portray a drug-addicted prostitute in Spike Lee's 1991 movie Jungle Fever. She felt sorry for co-star Samuel L. Jackson, "(I played) a foul-mouthed crack-smoking hoe. It’s true (I didn’t wash), ask Sam Jackson, he had to get a whiff of it!"
7Doris Day
Doris Day believed she was born in 1924 until her 95th birthday when the Associated Press found a birth certificate with the year 1922 on it.
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8Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth began showing signs of Alzheimer's during her 40s. Even as it worsened, people blamed her behavior on her heavy drinking. She never got a proper diagnosis until 1979 and upon her death in 1987 at just 68, she would become a major public face for Alzheimer's Awareness.
9Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly became close friends with dancer Josephine Baker after Kelly stormed out of a nightclub in NYC that Baker was denied entry because she was black.
10Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli only accepted the role of Lucille 2 on Arrested Development because she was asked in person by Ron Howard, who she had babysat when he was a child and she a teen.
