Edith Norma Shearer (August 11, 1902 – June 12, 1983) was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated women. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill, and William Shakespeare, and was the first five-time Academy Award acting nominee, was nominated six times in all, and won one for Best Actress for The Divorcee (1930).
Reviewing Shearer's work, Mick LaSalle called her a feminist pioneer, or "the exemplar of sophisticated modern womanhood and ... the first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not a virgin on screen".