Actress. Known for her peek-a-boo hairstyle, she is probably best remembered for her femme fatale roles in film noirs with Alan Ladd, during the 1940s. Her career spanned five decades, from films to stage and television, beginning in 1939 until 1970. Born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, her father worked for an oil company aboard a ship. When she was 10 years old, her father was killed in an industrial explosion. Her mother then married a newspaper artist and they lived in Saranac Lake, New York. As a young girl, she attended St. Bernard's School for a time, then was sent to Villa Maria, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal, Canada, from which she was expelled. She then moved with her family to Miami, Florida, where she attended Miami High School. In 1938, she moved with her family to Beverly Hills, California, where she enrolled in the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting (now the Beverly Hills Playhouse) and began working in films as an extra. Her first appearance on screen was for RKO Pictures, playing a small role among several coeds in the film "Sorority House" (1939). Similar roles followed, including "All Women Have Secrets" (1939) and "Dancing Co-Ed" (1939). In 1940, she married art director John S. Detlie, and they divorced three years later. Her breakthrough role was in the World War II drama "I Wanted Wings" (1941). The film was a major hit, in which she played the second female lead. It was during the filming of "I Wanted Wings" that she developed her signature look when her long blonde hair accidentally fell over her right eye during a take and created a "peek-a-boo" effect. The hairstyle became her trademark and was widely copied by women. She followed up with starring roles in more popular movies, including "Sullivan's Travels" (1942), "This Gun for Hire" (1942), "I Married a Witch" (1942), and "So Proudly We Hail!" (1943). During World War II, she changed her trademark peek-a-boo hairstyle at the urging of the government to encourage women working in war industry factories to adopt more practical, safer hairstyles. Although the change helped to decrease accidents involving women getting their hair caught in machinery, doing so may have been detrimental to her career. She became known for onscreen pairings with actor Alan Ladd, which began with "This Gun for Hire" (1942). Initially, the couple was teamed together merely out of physical necessity, as Ladd was just 5 feet 5 inches tall and she, at 4 feet 11 and 1/2 inches tall, was the only actress at Paramount short enough to pair with him. They became a popular onscreen duo and would make other films together, including the films noir "The Glass Key" (1942), "The Blue Dahlia," (1946), and "Saigon" (1948). Her career began to falter with her unsympathetic role as Nazi spy Dora Bruckman in "The Hour Before the Dawn" (1944). Reviews of the film included criticism of her unconvincing German accent. She had begun drinking more heavily during this period, and a growing number of people refused to work with her. To boost her career, Paramount Studios tried her in a series of 1945 comedies: "Bring on the Girls," "Out of This World," Duffy's Tavern," and "Hold That Blonde;" followed by "Miss Susie Slagle's" (1946) and "The Sainted Sisters" (1948), but few were successful. In 1948, Paramount Studios did not renew her contract and, following a single film for 20th Century Fox, "Slattery's Hurricane" (1949), her career slowed. By the end of 1951, she had appeared in one last film, "Stronghold." That same year, she and her second husband, film director Andre de Toth, filed for bankruptcy, and the Internal Revenue Service later seized their home for unpaid taxes. On the verge of a nervous breakdown and bankrupt, she ran away, left her husband, and relocated to New York. As a result of her disillusionment with Hollywood and what it did to people, she decided to restart her career. She wanted to leave her sexy image behind; New York offered the opportunity to work in theater and the new medium, television. Her stage credits include "The Voice of the Turtle" (Atlanta, February 1951), "The Curtain Rises" (Olney Theatre, Olney, Maryland, 1951), "Peter Pan" (road tour, 1951), "Gramercy Hill" (1952), "The Little Hut" (Detroit, 1955), "Best Foot Forward" (1963), and "A Streetcar Named Desire" (New Theatre, Bromley, Kent, 1969). In September 1955, she married songwriter Joseph Allan McCarthy, but they divorced four years later. Afterwards, she drifted between cheap hotels in New York City, and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. In 1962, a New York Post reporter found her working as a barmaid at the all-women's Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan, leading to speculation that she was destitute. In 1966, she had a brief stint as a television hostess in Baltimore, Maryland, along with a largely-ignored film role in "Footsteps in the Snow." In 1970, she released her memoirs, "Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake" and used the money she made from the book to finance a low-budget horror film "Flesh Feast" (1970), her final onscreen appearance. Afterwards, she moved to Ipswich, England, where she met and married Royal Navy Captain Robert Carleton-Munro in June 1972. They divorced a year later. In June 1973, she returned to the United States and, while traveling in Vermont, she visited a local doctor, complaining of stomach pains. She was discovered to have cirrhosis of the liver as a result of her years of drinking, and she died shortly afterwards from hepatitis and acute kidney injury at the age of 50. She was one of the models for the animated character Jessica Rabbit in the film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (1988), especially for her hairstyle. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to films.