Shirley Temple, who died on February 10, 2014, was that rare example of a Hollywood child star who, when the cameras stopped rolling, carved out a new career. For four years, she was Hollywood's biggest box-office star representing the kind of sweet, innocent girl that everyone wanted as their daughter. However, years later, she reappeared as a successful politician. Shirley Temple was born in Santa Monica, California on 23 April 1928. Encouraged by her mother, she learned to dance while she was just three. In 1934, Stand Up and Cheer became her first film and the film was a great success. At the age of six she was earning $1,250 a week -- more than $21,000 at today's values. Across the world, audiences flocked to see her in films such as Little Miss Marker, The Little Colonel and The Littlest Rebel. In 1935 she was awarded a special Oscar (Academy Award) and her foot and hand prints were added to those of stars such as Jean Harlow and Mary Pickford outside Grauman's Chinese theatre in Hollywood. The peak of her film career came in 1939 when The Little Princess became a box-office success. Temple starred in a total of 43 feature films. But she found it difficult to maintain her film career in adulthood and retired from Hollywood in 1950. She disappeared from the spotlight for nearly 20 years. She returned to the public eye in 1967, as a Republican candidate for Congress. When Nixon became president, he rewarded her with an appointment to the American delegation to the United Nations. Then, in 1974, President Ford appointed her the United States Ambassador  to Ghana. George Bush Snr, appointed her Ambassador to Czechoslovakia. Shirley Temple drew a line between her childhood stardom and her later political career. "Some people are stuck on this image of the little girl," she once said. "She is not me. We shouldn't live in the past; my life is now." Nevertheless, for many across the world, the name Shirley Temple always called to mind a superstar child. What happened to Shirley Temple when she was 7 years old?
She won a special Oscar. She began to learn to dance. She appeared in her first film. She retired from Hollywood.