TO this day, Lillian Gish is looked up to with awe and respect: She was Hollywood?s first true actress. Born in 1893, she and younger sister, Dorothy, started acting as toddlers.

When they moved to New York, the siblings became close to another child actress, Mary Pickford, who prodded the legendary director, DW Griffith, to hire the Gish sisters.

Emotional impact
But, unlike her contemporaries with stage experience, Lillian delivered finely nuanced portrayals with stunning emotional impact. She set a new standard for movie acting that earned her the title ?The First Lady of the Silent Screen.?

Griffith was taken by her big, expressive eyes and waif-like fragility. Her style was perfect for the director?s ?invention??the close-up. The Gish sisters made their film debut in ?An Unseen Enemy? in 1912. Other movies quickly followed, but as Griffith?s most talented actress, Lilian was cast in his classics, like ?The Birth of a Nation? (1915) and ?Intolerance? (1916).

However, Lillian was soon considered faded by ungrateful producers and made only one film, ?His Double Life,? in 13 years.

In the 1940s and ?50s, Hollywood once more recognized her luminous presence in such films as ?Duel in the Sun? (where she was nominated for an Oscar) and ?Portrait of Jennie.?

In 1984, she was given a Lifetime Achievement award by the American Film Institute. Her final film was ?The Whales of August,? where she starred with the incomparable Bette Davis.