Jane Greer was an American film and television actress best known for her role as femme fatale Kathie Moffat in the 1947 film noir Out of the Past. In 2009, The Guardian named her one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.
Publicity photo of Greer for Out of the Past
With Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past
A femme fatale, sometimes called a maneater, Mata Hari, or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art. Her ability to enchant, entice and hypnotize her victim with a spell was in the earliest stories seen as verging on supernatural; hence, the femme fatale today is still often described as having a power akin to an enchantress, seductress, witch, having power over men. Femmes fatales are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, and unease.
The divine femme fatale of Hindu mythology, Apsara Mohini is described to have enchanted gods, demons and sages alike.
Salome in a 1906 painting by Franz von Stuck
Actress Theda Bara, in the film A Fool There Was
Femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck, in the classic film noir Double Indemnity