On this day in 1989, movie star Bette Davis died of cancer. During a career that spanned more than three decades, Davis appeared in some 80 films.

Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Massachusetts, Davis decided in high school to become an actress. She enrolled in a theater school in New York and was chosen to work with the Provincetown Players theater group. Making the jump from working actress to star proved difficult for Davis, though–for more than a decade, she played mediocre roles on Broadway and in the movies. She was turned down by at least one drama school, fired by director George Cukor after her first stock-theater performance, and rejected by Goldwyn studios after her first screen test.

Universal finally signed Davis in 1930, and she made her film debut in Bad Sister (1931), but she played unremarkable roles until the mid 1930s. Even her first Oscar, the Best Actress award for Dangerous (1935), failed to win her starring roles. When she rebelled against Warner Bros. and refused to take another undistinguished part, she was suspended, so she set off for England to make movies. Warner Bros. won a court battle that prevented Davis from working for anyone else, however, and Davis lost a widely publicized suit to terminate her contract. Despite losing the court battle, Davis did begin to command more respect from the company. In 1938, she won another Oscar for her role as a hot-tempered Southern belle in Jezebel.

Her star rose steadily throughout the 1940s, and she became renowned for her vivid portrayals of peculiar heroines. She starred in a series of acclaimed films that won her Best Actress nominations for five consecutive years, including Jezebel (1938), Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942). In 1950, she won the New York Film Critics Best Actress Award for her stunning performance as actress Margo Channing in All About Eve. Her career tapered off in the late 1950s but revived in 1962 with a leading role in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She spent most of the 1970s doing television work until cancer forced her to slow down. In 1977, she became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. She wrote two autobiographies, The Lonely Life in 1962 and This ‘N’ That in 1987, and has been the subject of many biographies.