Theda Bara

To be good is to be forgotten.  

I'm going to be so bad I'll always be remembered.

Theda Bara (July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955) was an American silent film and stage actress.

Bara was one of the most popular actresses of the silent era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname The Vamp (short for vampire). Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but most are now lost due to a fire that destroyed the majority of her films in 1937. After her marriage to Charles Brabin in 1921, she made two more feature films and retired from acting in 1926. Bara never appeared in a sound film.

She was born Theodosia Burr Goodman in the Avondale section of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853–1936),[2] a prosperous Jewish tailor born in Poland. Her mother, Pauline Louise de Coppett (1861–1957), was born in Switzerland.

Bara attended Walnut Hills High School, graduating in 1903. After attending the University of Cincinnati for two years, she moved to New York City in 1908. She made her Broadway debut in The Devil (1908).