Edith Norma Shearer (or simply Norma Shearer; 10 August 1902 – 12 June 1983) was a Canadian and American actress. She was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s. She usually played a girl-next-door in her early movies. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in "The Divorcee" in 1930. For most of the time before the Motion Picture Production Code, she played sexually liberated females in sophisticated contemporary comedy movies. She later appeared in historical and period movies.