Actress. She is best remembered as a star of 20th Century-Fox Studios in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was known for her resistance to being turned into a Hollywood sex symbol, rather preferring to play unglamorous, down-to-earth women. Born Elizabeth Jean Peters, her parents owned a small farm, and her father was also a laundry manager. After graduating from East Canton High School in her hometown, she attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan and later Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where she studied to become a teacher and majored in literature. While at Ohio State, she entered the Miss Ohio State Pageant in the fall of 1945 and won, which awarded her the grand prize of a screen test with 20th Century-Fox. She obtained a seven-year contract with Fox and dropped out of college to become an actress, but returned to college in the late 1940s, in between filming, to complete her work and she received her diploma. She was chosen to replace actress Linda Darnell as the female lead in "Captain from Castile" (1947) opposite Tyrone Power, when Darnell was reassigned to save the production of "Forever Amber" (1947). She was highly publicized and received a star treatment during the filming and the movie became a hit. She was offered a similar role in the western film "Yellow Sky" (1948) but turned it down because she deemed the role "too sexy." She followed with "Deep Waters" (1948, with Dana Andrews) and was slated to star in "Mr. Belvedere Goes to College" (1949) but was replaced by actress Shirley Temple. She then appeared in "It Happens Every Time" (1949, with Ray Milland), "Love That Brute" (1950, with Paul Douglas), and "Take Care of My Little Girl" (1950, with Jeanne Crain). However, it was her title role in "Anne of the Indies" (1951, with Louis Jourdan) that she finally gained stardom. She followed it with "As Young as You Feel" (1951, with Monty Woolley and featured Marilyn Monroe in a small role), "Viva Zapata!" (1952, with Marlon Brando & Anthony Quinn), "Lure of the Wilderness" (1952, with Jeffrey Hunter & Walter Brennan), the anthology film "O. Henry's Full House" (1952), "Pickup on South Street" (1953, with Richard Widmark), "Niagara" (1953, with Joseph Cotten and Marilyn Monroe), "A Blueprint for Murder" (1953, with Joseph Cotten), "Vicki" (1953, with Jeanne Crain), "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954, with Clifton Webb and Dorothy McGuire), and the 1954 westerns "Apache" (with Burt Lancaster) and "Broken Lance" (with Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner). Her last motion picture film was "A Man Called Peter" (1955, with Richard Todd), after which she married the eccentric film tycoon and billionaire businessman Howard Hughes in 1957 (eventually divorcing him in 1971) and retired from acting. In 1970, she returned to acting with the television movie "Winesburg, Ohio" (with William Windom) and in 1976, she had a supporting role in the NBC television miniseries "The Moneychangers." In 1981, she appeared in the television biblical drama film "Peter and Paul," produced by her husband Stan Hough, an executive with 20th Century Fox, whom she married in 1971 and remained with him until his death in 1990. She guest starred in the CBS television mystery series "Murder, She Wrote" in 1988, which was her final acting performance. She died just two days shy of her 74th birthday.