The actress Jane Wyman, who died at the age of 90 on 10 September, 2007, was perhaps most famous for her marriage to American President Ronald Reagan, but it was her award-winning portrayals of life’s sufferers that made her reputation in Hollywood.

She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her part as a deaf-mute rape victim in the 1948 film Johnny Belinda. She received a further three nominations for the prize and appeared in over 60 feature films during the 1940s and 50s.

Later in her career she found a new audience in the Californian soap opera Falcon’s Crest, playing the villainous Angela Channing, a role for which she received a Best Performance Golden Globe in 1984.

Ms Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in 1917. For many years her birth date was incorrectly believed to be in 1914. Her early personal life has been subject to much speculation, with some theorising that she added to her age to obtain illegal work when beginning her career and others speculating about an illegitimate marriage in 1933, rumours which were denied in later official histories.

Her parents, Manning J. Mayfield and Gladdys Hope Christian, divorced when she was four and her father died the following year. She was unofficially adopted by her neighbours Richard and Emma Fulks and was registered at her first school in that surname. Her real parents would also be edited out of official biographies.

Her adoptive mother encouraged her to enter showbiz and they moved to California when Sarah Jane was 11. "I was one of those blonde curly-haired kids and my mother thought I was destined for the movies," she later recalled. She showed little talent and the move was short-lived.

A timid child, lacking in self-confidence, she also hated school. However, Sarah Jane said that she made a discovery during her youth: “A good shield for shyness is a bold exterior. Were all the other dancers prettier? Never mind. I covered up by becoming the cockiest of all, by talking the loudest, laughing the longest, and wearing the curliest, most blatantly false eye-lashes in Hollywood.”

By 16 she was back in the entertainment industry, first as a radio singer and then with a few minor roles in films under the name Jane Durrell, though most of her appearances were unaccredited. In 1936 she changed her name to Wyman, which was the surname of the man she was rumoured to have married three years earlier, though it was also the professional name of her adoptive mother, further fuelling confusion.

Her first starring role came in 1937 in the comedy B-movie Private Wedding. The same year she married an older businessman named Myron Futterman. The marriage would last just over a year.

In 1938 she co-starred with actor and future president Ronald Reagan in the farce Brother Rat. The pair shared an on-screen kiss and an off-screen romance soon blossomed. They married in 1940. They had a daughter, Maureen Elizabeth, adopted a son, Michel, and a second daughter, Christine, was born prematurely and died the following day.

The couple were married for eight years and featured in several more films together. It was Reagan’s first marriage and he was reportedly heartbroken at its breakdown. Ms Wyman later twice married and divorced bandleader Frederick Karger, leading her to declare that she “was not suited for marriage”.

Following her Oscar win, Ms Wyman continued playing women in adversity, playing a blind woman in the The Blue Veil (1951), for which she received her third nomination, and a disabled woman in The Glass Menagerie (1950). Other notable appearances include Here Comes the Groom (1951) with Bing Crosby and Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950).

Her last big screen appearance was in the 1969 musical comedy How to Commit Marriage, but she received regular television work through the ‘70s before a nine-year stint on Falcon’s Crest. Health problems dogged the last years of her career, but she stubbornly refused to relinquish her role on the show.

Ms Wyman has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television. She also holds the record for the longest screen kiss, with Regis Toomey in You're in the Army Now (1941), at three minutes and five seconds.

After her death at her home in Palm Springs, her son Michael said: “Hollywood has lost the classiest lady to ever grace the silver screen.”