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Shirley Temple got her start in acting at age 3, and by 6 years old, she was an internationally-acclaimed film star
Temple experienced a different side of the industry as she got older and wasn’t booked for her roles based on being a precocious little girl, finding it harder to find work she felt comfortable with
At 22, Temple retired from acting after creating over 40 feature films
Shirley Temple made some big decisions about her life early on, and never looked back.
Of course, life was different for the child star, who kicked off her career at age 3. After getting her start in film shorts, Temple experienced her big-screen breakthrough in 1934’s Stand Up and Cheer!
At just 6 years old, Temple became an international film star and America’s little sweetheart. In a 1988 interview with PEOPLE, Temple refuted claims that her mother was the one to push her into the spotlight.
“She did not push me into anything. I loved what I did,” the actress said of her mother, Gertrude. “I remember cruel mothers who would pinch their children to make them cry in a scene, but my mother encircled me with affection.”
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Shirley Temple
Temple’s popularity reached new heights with 1934’s Bright Eyes, in which she famously sang “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” She began a more rigorous schedule that saw her making as many as 10 movies a year at one point.
At age 12, she took a two-year hiatus from the industry, but returning as a teenage star changed public reaction to her. She’d spend the next decade trying to regain her footing in Hollywood and while she did make many films, she wasn’t reaching her previous heights.
In 1945, Temple made a big move, getting married at 17 years old to John Agar, the brother of one of her classmates at the exclusive Westlake School.
“I wanted to be the first girl in my class to get married,” Temple recalled to PEOPLE, though sadly, the marriage didn’t last.
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Shirley Temple on her first wedding day in 1945
The dynamic between the two changed as Agar shifted from Army Air Corps private to also coming into an acting career. He even appeared in two films alongside his wife. While he sought stardom, she fell out of love and saw a darker side. They welcomed daughter Susan in 1948 but a year later, she filed for divorce.
It took just another year for Temple to find love again, this time in a whirlwind romance with Charles Alden Black, a US Naval officer. The two met in Hawaii, where Temple was traveling with her family. He courted her for 12 days, proposing on the 13th.
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Charles Black and Shirley Temple in 1950
On December 16, 1950, the two were married. That same day, Temple made the announcement that she was officially retiring from acting after nearly two decades in the business, during which she appeared in over 40 feature films.
By the end of that decade, Temple Black would become interested in entering the sphere of politics, which she first became engaged in after moving to Washington, D.C. with her husband.
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Shirley Temple in the 1970s
Richard Nixon appointed her a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations General Assembly two years after her unsuccessful 1967 bid for Congress. Throughout the ’70s, she was U.S. ambassador to Ghana and later U.S. chief of protocol before serving as an ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the first President Bush’s administration.
It served as an interesting pivot and an unforgettable next chapter for the child star, who died in her Woodside, California, home at 85 on Monday, Feb. 10, 2014, leaving behind a legacy of impact both in entertainment and politics.
Read the original article on People