After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, she was invited to Hollywood.

Producers saw her as a cheap alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.

She and actress Mary Pickford reportedly became good friends.

Back in Hollywood, she dated Gary Cooper for a while but married Russian actor and writer Ivan Lebedeff.

After Lebedeff's death in 1953 of angina pectoris, she moved back to Europe, where she stayed with several friends in London and Stockholm before she returned to Germany.