Rita Hayworth (October 17, 1918 - May 14, 1987), was an American actress of Spanish and English descent who reached fame during the 1940s as the era's leading sex symbol. She was sometimes called "The Love Goddess" or "The Great American Love Goddess," and was celebrated as an expert dancer and great beauty.

She was born Margarita Carmen Cansino, the daughter of Eduardo Cansino (Sr.) and Volga Haworth in Brooklyn, New York. The Cansinos were a famous family of Spanish dancers working in vaudeville. Their family ancestry were of the Roma people (Gypsies) native to Spain. Hayworth was trained as a dancer from childhood, and was on stage by the age of twelve.

First attracting the attention of film producers as part of the dance team "The Dancing Cansinos," Hayworth was signed first by Fox Studios in 1935, then free-lanced for several years before signing with Columbia Pictures. After a name change from Rita Cansino to Rita Hayworth, and painful electrolysis to raise her hairline, Rita made a splash as part of the ensemble cast in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939). The Strawberry Blonde with James Cagney followed in 1941. Finally her sizzling "other woman" part in Rouben Mamoulian's Blood and Sand (1941) with Tyrone Power solidified her new-found stardom.

Hayworth's fame as a beautiful redhead arose from this Technicolor film. The "love goddess" title was first given her by Life Magazine in August 1941, and Bob Landry's accompanying photograph of her (kneeling on a bed in a nightgown) caused a sensation and became one of the most requested wartime pinups. During World War II she ranked with Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner as the most popular of pinup girls with servicemen. Hayworth became Columbia's biggest star of the 1940s, under the watchful eye of studio chief Harry Cohn.

Hayworth's well-known films include the musicals that made her famous: You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942) (both with Fred Astaire), My Gal Sal (1942) with Victor Mature, and her best known musical, Cover Girl (1944) with Gene Kelly. Although her singing voice was dubbed in her movies, Hayworth was one of Hollywood's best dancers, dancing with power, precision, and unearthly grace. Cohn continued to effectively showcase Hayworth's talents in Technicolor films: Tonight and Every Night (1945) with Lee Bowman , and Down to Earth (1947), with Larry Parks. Her erotic appeal was most notable in Gilda (1946), a film noir directed by Charles Vidor, which encountered some difficulty with censors. This role — in which Hayworth performed a legendary one-glove striptease — made her into a cultural icon as the ultimate femme fatale. Other films include The Lady from Shanghai (1948) with husband Orson Welles , The Loves of Carmen (1948) with Gilda costar Glenn Ford , Salome (1953) with Stewart Granger, and the 1953 remake of Miss Sadie Thompson. Rita left her film career in 1948 to marry Prince Aly Khan, but after the marriage collapsed she returned with great fanfare in 1951 to film Affair in Trinidad (1952) with favorite costar Glenn Ford. In 1957, after making Fire Down Below with Robert Mitchum and Jack Lemmon, and Pal Joey with Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak, Rita finally left Columbia. She continued working throughout the 1960s, and made her last film in 1972.