Anna Sten

She was spotted as an actress in Russia during an amateur performance in 1923. She went to the Moscow Film Academy and acted in first theater plays.

She went to Germany in 1930 where she was able to work for few years.

Born in Russia to a Ukrainian father and a Swedish mother, Anna Sten studied at the Russian Film Academy and joined the Moscow Art Theater. Strikingly beautiful, she went on to appear in a number of Russian silent films, but it was in the German film Der Mörder Dimitri Karamasoff (1931) that Anna gained notice. Samuel Goldwyn saw a picture of Anna in the paper and rushed to view the film. After the first reel he sent word to sign her, hoping to develop her into a star of the magnitude of Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich. His agent did sign Anna to a contract but forgot to mention the fact that Anna didn't speak a word of English, which made her appearance in sound pictures questionable. She spent a year studying English every day and working out makeup and acting. Goldwyn publicity called her "The Passionate Peasant" and sold her image to papers all over America.

However, her first picture, Nana (1934), even though almost completely rewritten and reshot from the original, didn't bring audiences into the theaters. While Anna was looked great, the script and picture were average.

Her second film, We Live Again (1934), marginally better suited to her style, also died within weeks at the box office.

Anna Sten appeared in American and English movies. To these productions belong "Three Russian Girls" (1944), "Runaway Daughters" (1956) and "The Nun and the Sergeant" (1962).