The American actress and dancer began performing in vaudeville at the age of fourteen before making her first Broadway appearance, in 1911.
Besides her acting career, she wrote her own plays under the pen name Jane Mest, within which she freely mentioned risqué topics such as sex and homosexuality, becoming an early defender of women and gay rights. She obtained her first film contract in 1932 and rapidly became a popular seductive and comic actress who would also often right her own dialogues. In the 1950s, she had her own Las Vegas singing show in which she was surrounded by body-builders. Her curvaceous figure was a major inspiration from couture perfume bottles to Coca-Cola bottles and inflatable life jackets still jokily entitled 'Mae West' today.