Zsa Zsa Gabor, Actress and Hollywood Icon, Dead at 99

The acting roles dwindled in her later years, but that didn’t keep Gabor’s name out of the press.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, she and her sisters, Magda and Eva, came to the U.S.in the 1930s and ’40s.

“Everybody was there. She didn’t die alone”, he told AFP by telephone. Her husband Frédéric von Anhalt said she had died of a heart attack. Gabor was married nine times but only had one child, a daughter, Francesca Hilton.

Another marriage that nobody counted – a case of bigamy at sea with a has-been Mexican actor – lasted only a day and was annulled. Originally from Hungary, she was 99 years old, and her nine marriages combined with her extravagant lifestyle made her into a Hollywood icon.

Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Hungarian actress, singer and socialite, has died aged 99.

Gabor faced failing health in recent years. She was sentenced to three days in jail and ordered to pay $13,000 in court costs.

As for the impact of the 1960s and feminism on much-married socialites, she replied: “The women’s movement hasn’t changed my sex life. Nor knowing who she was or how famous she was”, her rep Ed Lozzi said in a statement to PEOPLE. By 1958 her career started dwindling even further, and she landed minor roles such as Talleah in “Queen of Outer Space” and from there to minor appearances in “Touch of Evil”. Gabor had been nearly entirely on life support for the past five years. In reality, her quality of life had been gone long before she left us. Her leg was later amputated above the knee-but Gabor hung on.

She had a massive stoke in 2005 and broke her hip in 2010 when she fell over at home. The New York Times reports that in 2002, a vehicle accident caused her to be paralyzed and to use a wheelchair for mobility.

Two months following this, the upset over the death of friend Elizabeth Taylor sent her back to the hospital with high blood pressure. In 2011, she had emergency surgery after blood began flowing through a feeding tube inserted in her stomach.

Born in Hungary, Zsa Zsa emigrated to the USA during the Second World War and made her Hollywood debut in 1952. Gabor would have turned 100 in February. Her glittering life was one of a gloriously retrograde femininity, like something out of a Danielle Steel novel-dependent, certainly, on a parade of wealthy men but somehow never at their mercy. She married her first husband, Turkish official Burhan Asaf Belge, the next year, and moved to the US after their split in 1941.

Gabor had one daughter, Francesca, with ex-husband Conrad Hilton. She was the archetype, in many ways, for the star persona exploited famously by Paris Hilton. “I still am”, von Anhalt said in the October 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.

Gabor also had a quick wit.