Lillian Gish (1896-1993)The career of Lillian Gish (and that of her younger sister, Dorothy) was bound up with DW Griffith, under whose direction she worked from 1912 to 1921 in The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Way Down East and other classics, becoming arguably the greatest film actress of the time. She brought an ethereal openness to her work, a combination of vulnerability and resilience, which is to be seen at its finest in masterpieces directed by Swedish film-maker Victor Sjöström: The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928), an overwhelming psychological drama about an eastern woman marrying a tough farmer in the desolate west

Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive