The future jungle wife of Tarzan and mother of Mia Farrow was a schooldays classmate of Vivien Leigh at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton (London). At the age of nine she intended to become a pilot. After more school in Paris, back in Dublin, she met director Frank Borzage who was doing location filming for Fox and who invited her to Hollywood where she arrived, accompanied by her mother, in 1930. In 1932 she signed with MGM and completed nine movies at four studios. Irving Thalberg picked her to play Tarzan's Jane. She was perhaps MGM's most popular ingenue throughout the 1930s in a number of non-Tarzan vehicles. She married Australian writer John Farrow (later an award-winning director and author of a history of the papacy, a life of Thomas More and a Tahitian/English dictionary) with whom she had seven children: Michael, Patrick, Maria (Mia Farrow), John, Prudence, Theresa (Tisa Farrow), and Stephanie Farrow. After her last Tarzan she asked for release from her contract to care for her husband who had just left the Navy with typhoid. She continued making occasional movies, television and stage appearances and operating a bridal consulting service (Wediquette International).
Her oldest son, Michael, was killed in a plane crash while taking flying lessons, in 1958. Mother-in-law of Frank Sinatra. Mother-in-law of André Previn. Mother of Michael Farrow, Patrick Farrow, John Charles Farrow, Mia Farrow, Tisa Farrow, Prudence Farrow and Stephanie Farrow, from her marriage to John Farrow Is portrayed by Frances Helm in Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story Grandmother of Moses Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn, Daisy Previn and Fletcher Farrow Previn Despised working with the ape 'Cheetah' during the filming of the MGM series of Tarzan movies, and according to daughter Mia Farrow privately referred to the primate as 'that ape son of a bitch.' Is often dubbed 'Ireland's first film star'.