--- title: Greta Garbo: Portrait of a Legend Who Turned Her Back on Fame description: On her birthday LIFE remembers the great actress Greta Garbo as seen through the lens of master photographer Edward Steichen. canonical: https://time.com/3813939/greta-garbo-portrait-of-a-legend-who-turned-her-back-on-fame/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-09-17T16:49:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T06:14:23.552Z og:title: Greta Garbo: Portrait of a Legend Who Turned Her Back on Fame og:description: On her birthday LIFE remembers the great actress Greta Garbo as seen through the lens of master photographer Edward Steichen. og:url: https://time.com/3813939/greta-garbo-portrait-of-a-legend-who-turned-her-back-on-fame/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltedf8a84b35a1d1f1/6987ea258e06017e8945e04e/greatgarbo_cover.jpg?branch=production&width=745&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 745 og:image:height: 419 og:image:alt: greatgarbo_cover og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Greta Garbo: Portrait of a Legend Who Turned Her Back on Fame twitter:description: On her birthday LIFE remembers the great actress Greta Garbo as seen through the lens of master photographer Edward Steichen. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltedf8a84b35a1d1f1/6987ea258e06017e8945e04e/greatgarbo_cover.jpg?branch=production&width=745&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Greta Garbo: Portrait of a Legend Who Turned Her Back on Fame by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Sep 17, 2013 4:49 PM UTC  Portrait of Greta Garbo by Edward Steichen on the cover of LIFE Magazine, January 10, 1955. Portrait of Greta Garbo by Edward Steichen on the cover of LIFE Magazine, January 10, 1955.LIFE Magazine by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Sep 17, 2013 4:49 PM UTC When LIFE published Edward Steichen’s 1928 portrait of Greta Garbo on its cover in January 1955, the Swedish-born actress was still one of the most famous film personalities in the world**—**despite not having appeared in a movie for more than a decade. She was then, and a quarter-century after her death she remains, a singular screen presence: a mysterious, alluring star of both silent films and the early, Golden Age of “talkies” who retired from acting when she was just 35 years old. Today, of course, she’s almost a punch line for people who have never even seen one of her movies (_I want to be alone_), while for true film buffs she is comparable only with the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis when discussing genuine, enduring screen icons. Here, on her birthday**—**she was born Sept. 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, and died in New York City in April 1990, at the age of 84**—**LIFE.com remembers Garbo, the legend, as seen through the lens of a master. Steichen’s photo (originally published in _Vanity Fair_ in 1929) is, in many ways, the image that countless people have in mind when they think of Garbo. Her gaze is at-once so direct and so unreadable that it’s difficult to know if she’s offering the viewer a challenge, or an invitation. All we know for sure is that here is a rare sort of beauty: beguiling, disquieting, inscrutable. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3813939/greta-garbo-portrait-of-a-legend-who-turned-her-back-on-fame/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3813939/greta-garbo-portrait-of-a-legend-who-turned-her-back-on-fame/"},"headline":"Greta Garbo: Portrait of a Legend Who Turned Her Back on Fame","datePublished":"2013-09-17T16:49:41.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T06:14:23.552Z","description":"On her birthday -- b. 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