Born Muriel Harding in England, Olga Petrova adopted her more exotic stage name as she became a successful actress in musicals and the London and New York Vaudeville scenes. Her American film career, which began with "The Tigress" in 1914, spanned more than two dozen silent pictures from 1914-1918. Petrova expressed disdain for roles as the "simpering, gushing ingénue," preferring to play "the woman of today: a modern, quick thinking and wholly human woman." She wrote several of her own screenplays, was a playwright and penned a 1942 autobiography titled "Butter With My Bread." This vinette-style portrait cements her strong self-conception as she looks sidelong toward the camera with an upright, confident posture and beguiling eyes.