The youngest of three kids, Edythe Marrenner was born in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Her dad had Irish roots and her mom was of Swedish descent. From them, Edythe got her pale skin and red hair—features that would later become her signature look.
She grew up poor and often felt invisible next to her older sister, Florence, who was clearly her mother’s favorite. Edythe carried that feeling of being left out with her for the rest of her life.
When she was just seven years old, Edythe was hit by a car and broke her hip. Doctors warned she might never walk again. But after six months, she was using crutches and went back to school a year later. The accident left one of her legs shorter than the other, so she had to wear a lift in her shoe. Kids at school made fun of how she walked—but in Hollywood, that walk became part of her charm.
“I learned young that life is a fight,” she once said. “My family was poor, and so was my neighborhood. The only way I could escape the hard parts of life was by going to the movies. That’s where I decided I wanted to make money—and I became very determined.”
As a teen, Edythe was one of hundreds of girls brought to Hollywood to try out for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Her screen test didn’t go well. It took years of acting and voice lessons paid for by the studio before her true talent came through. That’s when she got a new name: Susan Hayward.
People often said Susan came across as cold or distant. She didn’t enjoy big social events or being part of a crowd. What she really loved was deep sea fishing—so much that she owned three big fishing boats.
Directors liked working with her because she was focused and professional. She showed up, did the work, and did it well—but once filming stopped, she kept to herself.
“My life’s an open book,” she once said. “I had a rough, poor childhood in Brooklyn. I had to fight my way up in a town called Hollywood, where people will crush you if they can. I don’t relax—I never learned how. And I don’t want to. Life’s too short for that.”
Susan won the Best Actress Oscar for playing real-life death row prisoner Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958). Her performance was so intense and emotional that the New York Times said anyone who could watch it without being shaken “must be made of stone.”
“I never thought of myself as a movie star,” Susan once said. “I’m just a working girl. A working girl who climbed to the top—and never fell off.”