[3] Rainer started her acting career in Germany at age 16, under the tutelage of Austria's leading stage director, Max Reinhardt.

After years of acting on stage and in films in Austria and Germany, she was discovered by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scouts, who signed her to a three-year contract in Hollywood in 1935.

[4] For her next role, producer Irving Thalberg was convinced, despite the studio's disagreement, that she would also be able to play the part of a poor, plain Chinese farm wife in The Good Earth (1937), based on Pearl Buck's novel about hardship in China.

Adding to her rapid decline, some feel, was the poor career advice she received from her then-husband, playwright Clifford Odets,[7] along with the unexpected death at age 37 of her producer, Irving Thalberg, whom she greatly admired.

She remembers his "tyrannical possessiveness", and was saddened to see her mother, "a beautiful pianist, and a woman of warmth and intelligence and deeply in love with her husband, suffering similarly".

[15] She was only six when she decided to become part of the entertainment world, and recalled being inspired by watching a circus act: I thought that a man on the wire was marvelous, in his spangles and tights.

[17] At age 16, Rainer chose to follow her dream to become an actress; under the pretext of visiting her mother, she traveled to Düsseldorf for a prearranged audition at the Dumont Theater.

[19] Rainer later began studying acting with Max Reinhardt, and, by the time she was 18, there was already an "army of critics" who felt that she had unusual talent for a young actress.

[9] In 1934, after appearing in several German language films, she was seen performing in the play Six Characters in Search of an Author by MGM talent scout Phil Berg, who offered her a three-year contract in Hollywood.

But Rainer recalled that studio head Mayer did not want her playing the part, seeing it as too small: "You are a star now and can't do it," he insisted.

[27] The director admitted that the main reason Rainer was cast was her eyes, claiming that they "are just as large, just as lustrous, and contain the same tantalizing quality of pseudo naughtiness" the part required.

[22] Rainer "so impressed audiences with one highly emotional scene," wrote biographer Charles Affron, that she received the Academy Award for Best Actress.

When she finally arrived, master of ceremonies George Jessel, during the commotion, made the mistake of introducing Rainer, which Bette Davis had been scheduled to do.

[29][30] The role, however, was completely the opposite of her Anna Held character, as she was required to portray a humble Chinese peasant subservient to her husband and speaking little during the entire film.

Her comparative muteness, stated historian Andrew Sarris, was "an astounding tour de force after her hysterically chattering telephone scene in The Great Ziegfeld", and contributed to her winning her second Best Actress Oscar.

"[33]: 142  Rainer remembered hearing Mayer's comments to Thalberg, her producer: "She has to be a dismal-looking slave and grow old; but Luise is a young girl; we just have made her glamorous — what are you doing?

"[13]: 13  She considered the part as one of the "greatest achievements" in her career, stating that she was allowed to express "realism," even refusing to "wear the rubber mask 'Chinese look,'" suggested by the makeup department.

Director George W. Hill, who had spent several months in China filming backgrounds and atmospheric scenes, committed suicide soon after returning to Hollywood.

In 1938, she played Johann Strauss's long-suffering wife Poldi in the successful Oscar-winning MGM musical biopic The Great Waltz, her last big hit.

[36] On set, she received star treatment, having her own dressing room, diction teacher, secretary, wardrobe woman, hairdresser, and makeup artist.

At the time she was cast in the film, her box office popularity had declined considerably, and she was one of the many well-known stars—along with MGM colleagues Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer, and Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Fred Astaire, Kay Francis and others—dubbed "Box Office Poison" by the Independent Theatre Owners of America.

[44] Disenchanted with Hollywood, where she later said it was impossible to have an intellectual conversation,[42] she moved to New York City in 1940 to live with playwright Clifford Odets, whom she had married in 1937.

Returning to America, she played the lead in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan on 10 March 1940 at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C. under the direction of German emigrant director Erwin Piscator.

She initially did not plan on returning to the screen, but explained her comeback in 1943 by saying: All the professor and the other students cared about was whether I could answer the questions, not whether I could come to class looking glamorous.

[50] Federico Fellini enticed her to play the cameo role of Dolores in his 1960 Oscar-winning classic La Dolce Vita, to the point of her travelling to the Rome location, but she quit the production prior to shooting, a fact that has been attributed either to her resistance to an unwanted sex scene or to her insistence on overseeing her own dialogue.

In April 2010, she returned to Hollywood to present a TCM festival screening of The Good Earth, accompanied by an interview with host Robert Osborne.

In 2011, she was initially rejected by the jury (Senta Berger, Gero Gandert, Uwe Kammann, Dieter Kosslick and Hans Helmut Prinzler) despite being nominated.

[54] A prolonged campaign started in October 2010, led by music executive Paul Baylay, who had noticed Rainer's omission on the Boulevard.

Rainer spent her final years living in a flat formerly occupied by actress Vivien Leigh at 54 Eaton Square, Belgravia, London.

[56] Rainer is best known for winning back-to-back Academy Awards, although she received criticism for being "an excessive actress, larger than life, probably more suited to the Viennese and German stage of her youth than anywhere else.