Find Out Who the Hollywood "It Girl" Was the Year You Were Born
We take a look back at some of the most talented breakout stars throughout the years.
Rogers' onscreen footwork, alongside Fred Astaire, made her a true icon of the early 1930s.
The Academy Award that Davis won for her performance in this year's film Dangerous would set the tone for her immensely successful career in the years to come.
After acting in a number of earlier silent films, Garbo continued to steal the show in films with sound. Her 1936 film, Camille, earned Garbo her third Oscar nom — and, of course, the "It Girl" title.
Long before another It Girl with the same last name took to the silver screen, this Hepburn won over viewers with a number of iconic 1930s performances.
The "First Lady of Song" put out her first No. 1 hit, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," this year.
Garland brought her singing and acting skills together as Dorothy in 1939's forever-beloved film version of The Wizard of Oz.
Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film Rebecca was what really rocketed this It Girl into the spotlight.
Two years prior, Leigh played Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. Need we say more?
Aside from being one of the most iconic actresses of her time, Lamarr was also an inventor: She and friend George Antheil patented a radio signaling device, meant to keep war enemies from decoding messages, this year. You go, girl!
Grable's superstar power reached far beyond her widely acclaimed "Million Dollar Legs" — she was voted the No. 1 box office draw by American movie exhibitors this year.
Dubbed "The Great American Love Goddess" by LIFE magazine, Hayworth was one of the most popular movie actresses of the 1940s.
Crawford showed us the power of a comeback when she stunned us with (and earned an Academy Award for!) her title role in Mildred Pierce.
Gardner became a star after her 1946 role in the movie version of Ernest Hemingway's The Killers.
A true legend, Day added "actress" to her resume in the late 1940s. (Fun fact: She was already the highest-paid vocalist in the world by the end of 1946.)
Shore's hit track "Buttons and Bows" was the No. 1 most popular song for 10 weeks this year.
An American jazz legend, Vaughan — a.k.a. "The Divine One" — achieved chart-topping success in 1949 with her hit, "Black Coffee."
Reynolds has held many an iconic role over the years (think Kathy in Singin' in the Rain and, more recently, Bobbi on Will & Grace), but her career really began with her 1950 breakout role in Three Little Words.
This It Girl might just also be our favorite funny girl of all time. It was this year that the iconic I Love Lucy made its debut.
Before becoming the Princess Consort of Monaco, Kelly began her path to stardom with a role in the Western film High Noon.
This year's It Girl needs no introduction … but we will remind you that, in 1953, she became one of Hollywood's most profitable stars thanks to her roles in Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Make a Millionaire.
Dandridge's stunning performance as the title character in this year's Carmen Jones led her to become the first African-American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Wood was only 16 when she starred alongside James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause.
French model and actress Bardot starred in this year's daringly sensual film And God Created Woman, earning her place as an international icon.
Italian actress Loren — and her iconic eyebrows — stole the hearts of many through the 1950s and beyond. (She was even the first to win a Best Lead Actress Oscar for a foreign-language film!)
Still a beloved actress today (we loved catching her in Downton Abbey), MacLaine earned her first Oscar nom for 1958's Some Came Running.
Dee acted as an iconic and poignant Ruth Younger in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun before she went on to play the same role in the movie version two years later.
Fans were surely scared to take showers after seeing her terrifying scene in Psycho.
What's more glamorous than Hepburn in this black dress, cigarette holder placed elegantly in hand, jewelry dripping from her neck as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's? She can look put-together yet convey loneliness so perfectly.
Moreno won the Oscar for her breathtaking portrayal of Anita in West Side Story.
She proved her worth as the lead in Cleopatra, whose $1 million budget made it the most expensive movie of its time.
She was Mary Poppins, the perfect nanny who knew that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. It also helped her win an Oscar.
Bewitched entered its second season in 1965 and Montgomery continued to, well, bewitch fans with her twitching nose.
Ross was the star of The Supremes and, later, her own solo career. When every song you sing becomes a bona fide hit, you're an It girl for life.
"Respect" ruled the Billboard charts in 1967, an anthem of womanhood and strength. And that's just one of the hits she released that year!
Giving new (or, come to think of it, old) meaning to the term "ride-or-die" couple, Dunaway starred with Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde.
After starring as Fanny Brice on Broadway, Streisand took the role to Hollywood for the movie version of Funny Girl, belting "Don't Rain on My Parade" and earning an Oscar for her incredible performance.
Burnett is a comedy legend. Her classic program The Carol Burnett Show boasted its highest ratings in 1969.
Love Story, a tragic romance, became a huge hit and brought the phrase "love means never having to say you're sorry" into the parlance. MacGraw played the beautiful, doomed lead and broke everyone's heart in the best possible way.
Turner always gave electrifying performances, but her cover of "Proud Mary" (with Ike) took the cake, starting slow and building to pure euphoria. The single was released on their album "Workin' Together."
Simon released "You're So Vain," one of the best revenge songs in the game (past or present), providing women everywhere with a great way to say "forget you" to their exes.
Minnelli won an Oscar in '73 for her work in Cabaret. Watch her performance of the title song here to understand why.
With the most enviable hair and wardrobe in the game, Grier's Foxy Brown kicked butt and looked confident doing so.
Summer kicked off her legacy as the "Queen of Disco" in '75, with the release of "Love to Love You Baby."
Fawcett skyrocketed to fame with Charlie's Angels. A People article declared her everyone's favorite angel because of her "wholesome, she-leopard sexiness."
Seeing Keaton in that suit in Annie Hall is still a life-changing event for many young women trying to figure out their sense of style and self.
As Sandy in Grease she was the good-girl-next-door turned bad-boys-dream.
Streep won an Oscar for her gripping performance in Kramer vs. Kramer and also stole the show in Manhattan.
Her role in Private Benjamin made her a bona fide star.
Parton starred in 9 to 5 in 1980 and recorded the titular song for the movie, which topped the charts the following year.
In An Officer and a Gentleman you get an award-winning Louis Gossett Jr. performance, Richard Gere in his prime, and an iconic final scene where Gere, in a pristine white Navy uniform, carries off Winger as her fellow factory-workers cheer.
If you haven't seen Flashdance, Beals's inspiring dance movie, change that immediately. At the very least, listen to the soundtrack. What a feeling it'll give you.
In 1984 The Cosby Show premiered with Bonet as Denise Huxtable, the daughter with amazing fashion sense.
The 1980s belonged to Ringwald, the awkward, lovable, gorgeous lead in John Hughes classic after John Hughes classic. In three consecutive years she starred in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink, cementing her place in the teen movie hall of fame.
With the release of her album Control, Jackson gave us such iconic songs as "Nasty" and "What Have You Done for Me Lately," and managed to top the Billboard 200 for the first time in her career.
While already a music and TV star, Moonstruck showed that Cher had real acting chops. She won an Oscar for her performance.
She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Working Girl, in which she played Tess, a woman who was not to be underestimated.
The model's career and star power rose for most of the late '80s, but it was firmly established that she was a bankable superstar when she appeared on the September issue of Vogue in 1989.
Roberts burst onto the scene with that huge smile in 1988's Mystic Pizza, but it was 1990's Pretty Woman that proved she was the romantic comedy star of her generation.
Known for her work with director Yimou Zhang, she starred in Raise the Red Lantern, a heartbreaking masterpiece about bonds and betrayal among the wives of a wealthy man.
Foster impressively transitioned from child star to adult actress, and her performance as Clarice Starling alongside a truly terrifying Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs defined her career and won her an Oscar.
For as long as she was around, Houston was a superstar, belting hit after hit; 1992 marked the release of The Bodyguard, her stratospheric acting role. Watch the "I Have Nothing" video to see how amazingly effortless she makes her work seem.
Sister Act was a huge box office success in which Goldberg sang, danced, and saved the day; and the sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, was actually fantastic! Every single number in it is just pure joy. Goldberg also starred in Made in America this year.
She was already beloved for her roles in Heathers, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands, to name a few, but it was her turn in Reality Bites that helped define '90s angst.
As if anyone could forget about Silverstone's iconic turn as Cher in Clueless. Her style, obliviousness, loyalty, hair, and bad driving ... what was there not to love about her?
Maybe "You had me at 'hello'" seems like a big joke now, but only Zellweger, with her mix of vulnerability and determination, could pull off Jerry Maguire's big line after he comes back to tell her he wants to be with her.
Gellar was in Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer this year, but her most iconic role will always be Buffy Summers. Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered giving teen (and adult) women (and men) a beautiful heroine whose everyday high-school problems were magnified by her destiny to save the world from great evil.
As if her music as a Fugees member wasn't gift enough to the world, Hill released her first solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, in 1998.
In late 1998, Spears was dancing in a high-school hallway in her schoolgirl uniform, so of course the … Baby One More Time album, which came out early the following year, made her an international superstar.
As the cheerleading captain who wouldn't let her team be stepped on anymore, Union stole the show in 2000's Bring It On. As soon as Union enters, you know her team is going to win — and you really, really want them to.
"I'll show you how valuable Elle Woods can be," Witherspoon declared in Legally Blonde — and she delivered in spades. Her intelligence and drive throughout prove that people shouldn't look at women as just pretty faces.
Berry was already a huge movie star by this time and her 2002 Oscar speech for Monster's Ball (after becoming the first Black woman to win the Best Actress award) was so emotional and powerful that it further solidified her important place in Hollywood.
With the release of Dangerously in Love, Beyoncé became a solo artist, laying the foundation for her current world domination.
Already a huge teen star, Lohan's endearing role as Cady Heron, a lovable, na?ve, new girl who accidentally becomes a mean girl (in Mean Girls, duh) will go down as some of her best work.
In 2005, after proving she was good at comedy (Mean Girls) and romance (The Notebook), she combined the two genres with Wedding Crashers. She and Ryan Gosling also made people swoon with their super-hot MTV Movies Awards Kiss.
After she stole your heart by turning into literal royalty in The Princess Diaries, Hathaway snagged the lead in The Devil Wears Prada. She didn't get to be delightfully mean like Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, but she still charmed the pants off viewers.
She may have placed seventh on American Idol, but she won the Oscar in 2007 for her role as Effie in Dreamgirls.
Stewart got the role a million girls dreamed of when they read Twilight — and she got to kiss Robert Pattinson.
"Being a part of something special makes you special, right?" Lea Michele asks this in the Glee pilot, as Rachel Berry, and boy, oh boy, did that prove to be true.
Stone's small but great part in Superbad made her one to watch, but it was her hilarious, vulnerable, go-for-broke comedy chops in 2010's Easy A that proved she was a star who could carry a movie.
In 2010, Lawrence starred in Winter's Bone and got nominated for an Oscar — and so a hype machine was born. In 2011 she played Mystique in X-Men: First Class and was announced as Katniss in The Hunger Games.
Remember how messed up it was that Washington was the first black female lead on a network show since the '70s? So messed up! Leave it to Washington and Shonda Rhimes to fix a mistake that big.
Nyong'o amazed critics and fans alike with her raw, intense, and stunning performance in 12 Years a Slave. She won an Oscar for her work in the film and stunned on every red carpet she walked. Now it's time to cast her in a billion more movies, Hollywood!
Initially the premise of Jane the Virgin seemed a little hard to get behind (after all, isn't it really mean to have a woman who hasn't had sex still get pregnant?), but the second Rodriguez appeared onscreen as strong, vulnerable, intelligent, kind, passionate Jane, it was clear this show was TV gold.
Chopra has long been a star of Bollywood, but in 2015, her ABC show Quantico premiered and she was everywhere, playing the smartest woman in the world, tasked with saving America even as she's accused of terrorism.
Find Out Who the Hollywood "It Girl" Was the Year You Were Born
We take a look back at some of the most talented breakout stars throughout the years.
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