Gloria Frances Stuart

 Gloria Frances Stuart, born Gloria Stewart (July 4, 1910 – September 26, 2010)

A native of Southern California, she began her acting in high school in the 1920s and on the stage in the 1930s and 1940s, performing in little theater and summer stock in Los Angeles and New York City. She signed a contract with Universal Pictures in 1932, and acted in numerous films for the studio, including The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Three Musketeers (1939). In 1945, after a tenure as a contract player for Twentieth Century Fox, Stuart abandoned her acting career and shifted to a career as an artist, working as a fine printer and making paintings, serigraphy, Bonsai, and découpage for the next five decades. She returned to acting in the late 1970s, appearing in several bit parts, including in Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year (1982) and Wildcats (1986). Stuart made a prominent return to cinema when she was cast as the 101-year-old elder Rose Dawson Calvert in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Stuart's performance earned her a Screen Actors Guild Award and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Receiving her nomination at age eighty-seven, she is the oldest person nominated for an Academy Award for acting. Her last film performance was in Wim Wenders' Land of Plenty (2004) before her death in 2010 at the age of 100. In addition to her acting and art career, Stuart was also an environmental activist and one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild. Stuart died on the afternoon of September 26, 2010 of respiratory failure. Her body was cremated.