Luise Rainer was a German and American actress who rose to stardom in Hollywood during 1930s. She was the first actress to win two ‘Academy Awards’ as best actress that too consecutively and her subsequent fading away from show business left many in awe. A protégé of renowned German language theatre director Max Reinhardt, she began acting onstage and soon made name as a distinguished artist performing with the director’s Vienna theatre group, garnering accolades from both audiences and critics. Later she endeavoured into films in Germany and Austria. After being spotted by ‘Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’ (‘MGM’) talent scouts she was signed into a three year contract in Hollywood. There she landed up the supporting role of Anna Held in ‘The Great Ziegfeld’. Her superb performance left the audience spellbound and fetched her first ‘Best Actress Academy Award’. She presented everyone with another breathtaking role of O-Lan, a simple and poor Chinese farm wife in drama film ‘The Good Earth’, which was completely in contrast to her portrayal of Anna Held. It won her a second ‘Best Actress Academy Award’. However after her euphoric start she appeared in several films but failed to create the same magic and eventually returned to Europe. The expeditious decline of her career was attributed to the abominable advice she received from her then husband playwright Clifford Odets by some, while others considered the untimely demise of her producer Irving Thalberg as an apparent reason.