The Granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright Who Conquered Hollywood

Before Meryl Streep, there was Anne Baxter – the original actress who could be both innocent and absolutely ruthless in the same scene.

Hollywood Royalty From Birth

Born May 7, 1923 in Michigan City, Indiana, Anne Baxter was Hollywood royalty in a different way – she was the granddaughter of the most famous architect in America, Frank Lloyd Wright.

She made her Broadway debut at just 13 years old. By 18, she was in Hollywood. And by 23, she was an Oscar winner.

The Two Roles That Defined Her

1. The Razor’s Edge (1946) – The Oscar Win:
As Sophie MacDonald, a young woman destroyed by tragedy and alcohol, Baxter gave a performance so heartbreaking she won both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe in 1947. She beat out legends twice her age.

2. All About Eve (1950) – The Icon:
This is the one. As Eve Harrington, the ambitious, cunning young fan who slowly takes over Bette Davis’s life, Anne created one of the greatest villains in cinema history.

The film won 6 Oscars and is still ranked as one of the best films ever made. Baxter was nominated for Best Actress Oscar in 1951 for it – losing to her co-star Bette Davis’s rival.

She later joked about playing Eve: “Eve was so rotten, they had to give me an award to apologize.”

More Than Just Two Films

In a career spanning almost 50 years across film, Broadway, and TV, she worked with every great director:

Alfred Hitchcock in I Confess
Fritz Lang in The Blue Gardenia
Cecil B. DeMille as Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments (1956) opposite Charlton Heston – her biggest box office hit

She also received an Emmy nomination in 1969 for The Name of the Game.

Off-screen, her life was an adventure novel. She left Hollywood to become a cattle rancher’s wife in the Australian outback – a story she told in her bestselling memoir Intermission: A True Story (1976).