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The silver screen had a way of making all its stars shine a little brighter and appear a little more glamorous, and Lauren Bacall was no exception—though she didn't need it.
Media Platforms Design Team
A striking beauty, Bacall got her start modeling on the March 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar (calling it "the twist of fate that changed my life forever") and won audiences over with her smoky voice and smoldering gaze in To Have and Have Not alongside Humphrey Bogart. That gaze—chin almost touching her chest, eyes looking up—was born out of a need to calm nervous shaking on set and it became her on-screen signature, known as 'The Look.'
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And Bacall's look was impossible to ignore: bold brows she refused to tweeze, dirty-blonde hair worn always in deeply-parted waves she insisted on doing herself, slightly imperfect teeth and that signature red lip. In 2011, the actress told Vanity Fair how she resisted working with studio makeup artists who wanted to alter her, saying, "Howard [Hawks] had chosen me for my thick eyebrows and crooked teeth, and that's the way they would stay." Her insistence on owning her image was a feminist move in an age where producers discovered, shaped and created female stars.
Throughout her career of over sixty films (she is pictured colorfully above in the famed How to Marry a Millionaire), Bacall remained provocatively glamorous and utterly recognizable—which is exactly the point. Her commitment to a signature beauty style, one that feels modern seventy years later, will forever inspire us.
Alexandra Tunell is the Senior Digital Beauty Editor at Harper's BAZAAR, where she writes beauty features and covers industry news, health, fitness and wellness trends. She began her career in the Lucky beauty closet, then went on to work at Allure. When she's not testing the latest skin care treatments, the Los Angeles native is searching the city for the best Mexican food, binge-watching Bravo and escaping to the beach as often as possible.
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