Claudette Colbert; born Émilie Claudette Chauchoin; September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996) was an American actress.

Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to motion pictures with the advent of talking pictures. Initially associated with Paramount Pictures, she gradually shifted to working as a freelance actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in It Happened One Night (1934), and received two other Academy Award nominations. Her other notable films include Cleopatra (1934) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).

With her round face, big eyes, charming, aristocratic manner, and flair for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert's versatility led to her becoming one of the best-paid stars of the 1930s and 1940s[3] and, in 1938 and 1942, the highest-paid. She starred in more than 60 movies. Among her frequent co-stars were Fred MacMurray, in seven films (1935–1949), and Fredric March, in four films (1930–1933).

By the early 1950s, Colbert had basically retired from the screen in favor of television and stage work, and she earned a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career tapered off in the early 1960s, but in the late 1970s, it experienced a resurgence in theater, and she received a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. For her television work in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987), she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy Award nomination.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Colbert the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.

For years, Colbert divided her time between her Manhattan apartment and her vacation home in Speightstown, Barbados. The latter, purchased from a British gentleman and nicknamed Bellerive, was the island's only plantation house fronting the beach. However, her permanent address remained Manhattan.

When Colbert's mother Jeanne died in 1970, and her brother Charles in 1971, her only surviving relative was her brother's daughter, Coco Lewis.

Colbert sustained a series of small strokes during the last three years of her life. She died in 1996 in Barbados, where she had employed a housekeeper and two cooks. She was 92. Her remains were transported to New York City for cremation and funeral services.

A requiem mass was later held at Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan. Her ashes are laid to rest in the Godings Bay Church Cemetery, Speightstown, Saint Peter, Barbados, alongside her mother and second husband.

Colbert never had children. She left most of her estate, estimated at $3.5 million and including her Manhattan apartment and Bellerive, to a long-time friend, Helen O'Hagan, a retired director of corporate relations at Saks Fifth Avenue. Colbert met O'Hagan in 1961 on the set of Parrish, her last film, and they became best friends around 1970.

After Pressman's death, Colbert instructed her friends to treat O'Hagan as they had Pressman, "as her spouse". Although O'Hagan was financially comfortable without the generous bequest, Bellerive was sold for over $2 million to David Geffen. Colbert's will also left $150,000 to her niece Coco Lewis; a trust of over $100,000 to UCLA, in Pressman's memory; and $75,000 to Marie Corbin, her Barbadian housekeeper.

When framed, these monochrome prints make an attractive addition to any movie lovers decor.

Lovingly printed to order on heavyweight gloss 210 g/m2 photo paper using high end printing techniques.

All prints shipped securely in hard backed envelopes so as to avoid damage during transit.