Hollywood Legend Zsa Zsa Gabor dies at 99

Zsa Zsa Gabor, whose 60-year career of playing herself helped paved the way for today's celebrity-obsessed culture, has died. She was 99.

Publicist Ed Lozzi confirmed that Gabor died Sunday in her Bel Air mansion. She had been on life support for the last five years, and according to TMZ, which first reported the news, she died of a heart attack.

While Gabor had multiple acting credits, her greatest performance was playing herself: She was famous for her accented English (calling everyone “darling,” which came out “dah-link”), eccentric name, off-screen antics (including a 1989 incident in which she slapped a Beverly Hills cop) and one-liners about her jewels, nine marriages and ex-husbands. Despite her glamorous image, her life, especially in later years, was marred by battles between her much-younger husband Frederic Prinz von Anhalt and her daughter.

The actress was frequently in the news in recent years as her health deteriorated. She broke her hip in July 2010 in a fall in her Bel-Air home after a 2002 car accident had left her wheelchair-bound and a massive stroke further hobbled her in 2005. Her leg was later amputated above the knee. Yet Gabor stubbornly clung to life.

Gabor appeared in films including the 1952 “Moulin Rouge”, 1953's “Lili”, Orson Welles' “Touch of Evil” and the 1958 camp classic “Queen of Outer Space”.

Born in Budapest, Zsa Zsa (born Sari) Gabor was crowned Miss Hungary in 1936 and followed her sister Eva to Hollywood. She got her foot in the showbiz door with MGM's 1952 “Lovely to Look At” and got a bigger break that year with “Moulin Rouge”, directed by John Huston, who is said to have given the ingénue a difficult time during the shoot. Gabor's English improved, but her Eastern European roots became part of her trademark.

On TV, she appeared on “The Red Skelton Hour”, “Playhouse 90” and “Matinee Theater”. She was featured in a 1960 TV adaptation of “Ninotchka” and guested on series including “Bonanza”, “Batman” (as the villainess Minerva) and “The Facts of Life”. She even appeared on the soap “As the World Turns” in 1981.

Her rise to fame coincided with the spurt of talk shows that filled the airwaves during the early days of TV. The early '50s created other talk-show and game-show celebrities, but few parlayed that fame much beyond the 1950s. Gabor's attitude — “I deserve attention not because of any talent, but just because of who I am” — was an early example of a phenomenon that has ballooned in the past decade, as tabloids put reality-TV figures on their covers and blogs cover them incessantly.

In 1986, at age 69, she married Prinz von Anhalt, some 30 years her junior. He was accused by her daughter of keeping her away from her mother, and it is doubtful Gabor knew of her daughter's death.