“It’s all about falling in love with yourself.”

A film star and recording artist who outlived all of her critics and remade popular culture in her own image. Kitt once made the first lady of the United States cry at a White House function by speaking out against the Vietnam War and was considered so personally scandalous that at one point the CIA issued a dossier labeling her a “sadistic nymphomaniac”–and they say that like it’s a bad thing.