Claudette Colbert Biography Quotes 9 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Claudette Colbert was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin on September 13, 1903, in Saint-Mande, France. Her parents moved the family to New York City when she was a child, and she grew up in Manhattan. She attended Washington Irving High School and studied design at the Art Students League, originally planning a career in fashion. A drama teacher encouraged her to try the stage, and she adopted the professional name Claudette Colbert, using a variation of a family surname. Her refined diction and poise made her a natural fit for Broadway, where she began appearing in the early 1920s.

Stage Beginnings and Entry into Film
Colbert built a reputation on the New York stage before cautiously entering films. Her first screen appearance came in the silent feature For the Love of Mike (1927), directed by Frank Capra, a difficult experience that briefly sent her back to theater work. The advent of sound, however, suited her crystalline voice and timing. She signed with Paramount and debuted in talkies with The Hole in the Wall (1929), opposite Edward G. Robinson, soon finding herself in demand for urbane comedies and sophisticated dramas.

Breakthrough and Stardom in the 1930s
By the early 1930s Colbert had become one of Paramount's most bankable stars. She matched wit and warmth with Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond (1930), then moved fluidly among genres. In 1934 she anchored three of the decade's defining productions: as the cunning yet human Cleopatra for director Cecil B. DeMille; as a businesswoman and mother in John M. Stahl's Imitation of Life; and, most famously, as runaway heiress Ellie Andrews in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, opposite Clark Gable. That last performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress and set a gold standard for screwball comedy. She also formed a durable screen partnership with Fred MacMurray in a string of sophisticated comedies at Paramount, many guided by director Mitchell Leisen, including The Gilded Lily (1935) and later No Time for Love (1943). With writers Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder providing sparkling scripts and filmmakers like Ernst Lubitsch (Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, 1938) and Leisen (Midnight, 1939) shaping the tone, Colbert became synonymous with grace, intelligence, and impeccable timing.

Wartime and 1940s Work
Colbert's range expanded in the 1940s to include patriotic and domestic wartime narratives. She gave vivid performances in So Proudly We Hail!, the nurses-in-war drama also starring Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake, and in Since You Went Away (1944), produced by David O. Selznick and co-starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten, for which Colbert received an Academy Award nomination. She also ventured into period adventure with John Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) alongside Henry Fonda and starred in The Palm Beach Story (1942), one of Preston Sturges's finest comedies. Throughout these years she remained a reliable box-office presence and an emblem of Hollywood sophistication.

Return to Stage and Later Screen Appearances
After her peak film years, Colbert renewed her ties to the theater, headlining successful stage productions and touring extensively. She continued to accept select film roles and transitioned smoothly into television. Late in life she earned fresh acclaim for the miniseries The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987), an ensemble piece in which she played a patrician matriarch opposite Ann-Margret; the performance brought her a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination, underscoring her ability to command the screen across eras and mediums.

Craft, Image, and Collaborations
Colbert was celebrated for a cool, patrician surface enlivened by sly humor and emotional clarity. She cultivated a meticulous on-camera image, collaborating closely with cinematographers and designers. At Paramount, costume designer Travis Banton helped craft her sleek, modern elegance, while cinematographer Victor Milner's lighting on Cleopatra became a benchmark for glamorous portraiture. Directors such as Capra, DeMille, Leisen, Ford, Sturges, and Lubitsch shaped her finest work, and her screen partners ranged from Gable and MacMurray to Gary Cooper, Joel McCrea, Spencer Tracy, and Henry Fonda. She was equally persuasive in pre-Code dramas, glossy comedies of manners, and later character pieces, sustaining a reputation for professionalism and a keen sense of what suited her talents.

Personal Life
Colbert married actor and director Norman Foster in 1928; the two pursued separate careers and later divorced. In 1935 she married Dr. Joel Pressman, a surgeon and academic, a union that lasted until his death in 1968. She had no children. Though she guarded her privacy, colleagues often spoke of her discipline, generosity, and unsentimental humor. French-born but American by temperament and career, she moved easily between coasts and, later, between the United States and the Caribbean. In her final years she made her home in Barbados, where she died on July 30, 1996, at the age of 92.

Legacy
Claudette Colbert's legacy rests on a rare combination of versatility and consistency. She won an Oscar for one of Hollywood's canonical romantic comedies, sustained leading-lady status for more than a decade, and adjusted her craft to new formats without losing poise or presence. Her best films with Capra, DeMille, Sturges, Leisen, Ford, and Lubitsch still exemplify the classical studio era at its most polished. Beyond awards and box office rankings, her influence endures in the template she set for the witty, self-possessed heroine who reveals vulnerability and resolve beneath impeccable style. For audiences and artists alike, she remains a model of how intelligence, technique, and taste can carry an actor across changing fashions and generations.

Our collection contains 9 quotes who is written by Claudette, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Motivational - Grandparents - Self-Love - Marriage.