After attending the University of California, Berkeley, she embarked on a career in theater, performing in local productions and summer stock in Los Angeles and New York City.

Stuart gradually returned to acting in the late 1970s, appearing in several bit parts, including in Richard Benjamin's My Favorite Year (1982) and Wildcats (1986).

She made a prominent return to mainstream cinema at age 86 when she was cast as the 100-year-old elder Rose Dawson Calvert in Titanic (1997), which earned her numerous accolades and renewed attention.

In addition to her acting and art careers, Stuart was a lifelong environmental and political activist, who served as a co-founding member of the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League.

[12] Stuart attended Santa Monica High School, where she was active in theater and performed the lead role in her senior class play, The Swan.

In college, she appeared in plays, worked on the Daily Californian,[15] contributed to the campus literary journal, Occident, and posed as an artist's model.

"[16] In Carmel, she notes that her friendship with muckraker Lincoln Steffens gave her "... much deeper insight into the abuses of laborers and blue-collar workers and made me ready to work for liberal causes when I got to Hollywood a few years later.

"[16] At the end of her junior year, in June 1930, Stuart married Blair Gordon Newell,[17] a young sculptor who apprenticed with Ralph Stackpole on the facade of the San Francisco Stock Exchange building.

[18] The Newells moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea where there was a stimulating community of artists such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Robinson Jeffers and Lincoln Steffens and his wife Ella Winter.

[15] Stuart considered herself a serious actress in theater, but she and Newell "were stony broke, living hand to mouth" so she decided to sign the contract with Universal, which paid a bit more than Paramount.

[27] In early December 1932, the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers announced that Gloria Stuart was one of fifteen new movie actresses "Most Likely to Succeed"—she was a WAMPAS Baby Star.

[28] Stuart's career advanced when English director James Whale chose her for his film The Old Dark House (1932), playing the glamour role of a sentimental wife who winds up stranded among strangers at a spooky mansion, among the ensemble cast (Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore and Raymond Massey).

[32][33][34][35] In June 1936, she helped Paul Muni, Franchot Tone, Ernst Lubitsch, and Oscar Hammerstein II form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League.

[36] Stuart was given her first co-starring role by director John Ford in her next film, Air Mail, playing opposite Pat O'Brien and Ralph Bellamy.

[46] In 1933 (on the set of her film Roman Scandals, a comedy starring Eddie Cantor), Stuart met Arthur Sheekman, one of the movie's writers.

Her first assignment from studio head Darryl F. Zanuck was in Professional Soldier, supporting child star Freddie Bartholomew and Victor McLaglen (who, the year before, had won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Informer).

Frank S. Nugent noted: "There is a minor romance along the way between Gloria Stuart, the king's noble governess, and Michael Whalen, the professional soldier's part-time assistant, but no one should take it seriously.

[60] Stuart later appeared in The Lady Escapes, Life Begins in College and Change of Heart, which did not merit space in The New York Times' movie pages.

They caught the SS President Adams, the last American passenger ship to cross the Atlantic,[71] and arrived in New York City in September.

[82] Two years later, Stuart took one more role: she wore a redhead's wig in She Wrote the Book a comedy starring Joan Davis and Jack Oakie.

[85] With Sheekman's encouragement, she opened a shop on Los Angeles's decorators' row, named it Décor, Ltd.[86] Stuart created découpaged lamps, mirrors, tables, chests and other one of a kind objets d'art.

Over the next four years, her work gained attention, and her pieces were carried by Lord & Taylor in New York, Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Bullock's in Pasadena and Gump's in San Francisco.

After living in rented spaces for ten years, Stuart and Sheekman bought an old craftsman-style house, where she redesigned the interior, supervised the remodeling, designed all the furniture and had it custom made.

She got an agent and was immediately cast in a small role as a customer in a store in the ABC television film The Legend of Lizzie Borden starring Elizabeth Montgomery.

[53] In May 1996, Stuart received a message about a film role: "A female voice said she was calling from Lightstorm Entertainment ... about a movie to be shot on location, maybe Poland ... about the Titanic, directed by James Cameron ..."[112] The next afternoon, Cameron's casting director, Mali Finn, came to Stuart's house "... with her assistant, Emily Schweber, who was carrying a video camera ... Mali and I talked while Emily filmed us.

"[126] Also in May, Stuart was guest of honor at the Great Steamboat Race between the Belle of Louisville and the Delta Queen and then was Grand Marshal of the 1998 Kentucky Derby Festival's Pegasus Parade.

Stuart made her debut at The Hollywood Bowl on July 19, 1998, reading the poem, Standing Stone, Paul McCartney's oratorio for orchestra and chorus.

[136] From the time Stuart was announced in the Titanic cast, she appeared before the camera for interviews on subjects as diverse as Groucho Marx, Shirley Temple, James Whale, horror movies and friends Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.

[138] Stuart celebrated her 100th birthday on July 4, 2010, hosted by James Cameron and Suzy Amis as well as family and friends at the ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills.

"[4] After tasting Stuart's goose in Kirschwasser aspic, the writer Samuel Hoffenstein composed a poem, which he comically said was inspired by "hearing the wings of all the poets brush thro' Gloria's kitchen.