 Hollywood legend Shirley Temple – who found fame as one of the most popular child stars of all time – has died aged 85. Relatives of the actress said that Temple passed away at her home in California on Monday from natural causes, ‘surrounded by her family and caregivers’. “We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and… our beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother,’ the family said in a statement. Temple, who was born in 1928, began her acting career when she was just three years old, going on to appear in a string of films including Poor Little Rich Girl, Curly Top, Bright Eyes and Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm. To this day, she remains the youngest ever person to win an Oscar, being awarded an honorary statuette in 1935 when she was six – as well as being the biggest box office draw in Hollywood between 1935 and 1938.  But despite notching up 43 film appearances as a child star, she fared less well in her attempts to forge an acting career as an adult, eventually retiring at the age of 22. Temple later became involved in politics – under her married name Shirley Temple Black – entering the race for Congress as a Republican candidate in 1967 and later becoming the US ambassador to Ghana under President Gerald Ford. She later took up the post of US ambassador to Czechoslovakia, during George Bush Snr’s time in office. Despite forging a successful political career Temple admitted that those who remembered her fondly from her films were ‘stuck on this image of me as a little girl.’  ‘My only problems have been with Americans who, in the beginning, refused to believe I had grown up since my movies,’ she added. The actress was married twice, firstly to John Agar from 1945-1949, and later to Charles Alden Black, whom she wed in 1950 and was married to for 54 years before his death in 2005. She had one daughter, Linda, from her marriage to Agar, as well as son Charles Jr and daughter Lori from her marriage to Black. Temple was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1972 and underwent a mastectomy – later becoming one of the first public figures ever to speak openly about the disease.  |
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