Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but Hollywood is partial to a redhead. The long line of the Titian-tressed to have graced the silver screen ranges from Katharine Hepburn and Rita Hayworth, up to Susan Sarandon and Julianne Moore.

The small screen has had its red alerts too, from The X-Files' Gillian Anderson to television's current redhead pin-up, Mad Men's Christina Hendricks. Though not all are the genuine article – Anderson's a self-confessed mousey brown and Hendricks admits to have dyed her hair red since age 12 – it's the go-to colour for heroines who stand out from the crowd.

A cascade of pre-Raphaelite curls is what most likely mesmerised British actor and producer Charles Laughton when he first saw a screen test of the then 19-year-old Maureen FitzSimons. Not only was she a natural Irish redhead, she was also another Hepburn in the making, being tall, athletic and not afraid to do her own stunts. Laughton persuaded her into a name change to the billing-friendlier Maureen O'Hara, and cast her in Alfred Hitchcock's l939 version of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn. Although it's not considered classic Hitchcock, reviews of the film hailed young newcomer O'Hara as "stunning" in terms of star quality.

Laughton took O'Hara with him to America in the same year to shoot his next film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was the first in a long series of classics in which she starred, including How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and the film destined to become a cult – not least among fans of hilarious stage Oirishness – The Quiet Man (1952).

Despite the clichés, and her role as proverbially fiery-tempered Mary Kate Danaher, O'Hara's red-gold hair and green eyes were made for colour film and she became dubbed the Queen of Technicolour. Her Quiet Man co-star was her lifelong friend, John Wayne. She considered 'The Duke' the epitome of all that's best in men.

"I wish all actors would be more like Duke – honest and genuine," she once said. "This is a real man."

But with John Ford, the director of The Quiet Man, relations were often far from cordial. She describes an angry, jealous, disappointed character with a temper than could spill over into violence.

"I was talking to a director I knew and Ford just turned around and punched me on the jaw. There was no reason or explanation and I walked straight out of the house and vowed I'd never speak to him again. Of course I did, but it took a while. And he never apologised."

Quite what her rather refined family back in Dublin would have made of such behaviour is anyone's guess. Maureen FitzSimons was born in Ranelagh on 17 August 1920. She inherited her soprano voice from her opera singer mother, Marguerite Lilburn Fitz­­­­Simons. Charles FitzSimons was a Dublin businessman and football fan who owned a part-share back then in Shamrock Rovers.

That their daughter, one of six children, was destined for the stage was indicated early on as she excelled at singing and drama during the annual feis. At 14, she was performing at the Abbey Theatre. Just five years later, she had not only starred in her first film, but already met her first husband. Two years later, her marriage to English film producer George Brown was annulled. Later the same year, 1941, she married American film director Will Price. They had a daughter, Bronwyn, but the marriage ended in 1953.

More mature film roles began to come in, such as the popular l960s movie, The Parent Trap. But then she met third husband, aviator Charles F Blair junior, who is invariably described in biographies as the love of her life. They married in 1968 and she had no qualms about giving up her career.

"I quit making movies when I married Charlie," she said, "and went into aviation. I also published a magazine in the Caribbean. It was worth quitting to go with him adventuring around the world."

After he was killed in a plane crash in 1978, she took over his aviation business to become the first female CEO of an airline. And there was the occasional return to the silver screen, most notably in the l990s, starring as John Candy's interfering mother in Only The Lonely. These days, she spends part of the year at her home in Glengarriff, Co Cork.

Despite a career spanning almost 60 years and a string of film awards, Maureen O'Hara has never been nominated for an Oscar. Perhaps it's that fiery image and fierce independence (enhanced no doubt by assumptions about red hair) that has made her something of a Hollywood outsider.

As a young woman in the US, she regularly read the riot act about being referred to as a "British subject", while her 2004 autobiography, 'Tis Herself, details the contractual battles she fought throughout her career with the studios. As film's most fiery redhead, Mary Kate Danaher, would have it: "Come a-runnin'? I'm no woman to be honked at and come a-runnin'!"

Hero or Villain? Maureen O'Hara

High: The actress dubbed the Queen of Technicolour was also the first female CEO of an airline

Low: O'Hara's third husband, aviator Charles Blair, died in a plane crash in 1978