Greta Garbo
(retired in 1941)
Garbo was an enigmatic superstar of silent films and early Hollywood 'talkies' until her surprising retirement at the age of 36. Garbo refused subsequent attempts to lure her back to acting, and settled in New York in 1953. Garbo was a star of silent films before making Anna Christie (1930), which was promoted with the famous tag line 'Garbo Talks!' In the 1930s she played doomed title characters such as Mata Hari (1932) and Anna Karenina (1935). Apart from a few screen tests in 1949 for Walter Wanger's La Duchesse de Langeais - she eventually didn't star in the film - Garbo never returned to filmmaking. She died in 1990.
Grace Kelly
(retired in 1956)
Talk about life imitating art. In the summer of 1955, Kelly began work on The Swan, in which she plays a princess of a lesser European royal family; barely a year afterwards, she became one in real life, when she married Prince Rainier of Monaco. The wedding brought her five-year acting career to a swift close. Kelly first came to public attention with performances in High Noon (1952) - a turn soon to be followed by high-profile successes such as Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (also 1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955). Princess Grace - as she was known after her marriage - died in a car accident in 1982 after suffering a stroke at the wheel.