Mercedes de Acosta was born in New York City to a wealthy Spanish-Cuban émigré family, the youngest of eight children.
Mercedes de Acosta was born on March 1, 1893, in New York City, the youngest of eight children born to Ricardo de Acosta and Micaela Hernández de Alba y de Alba, aristocratic émigrés from Spain and Cuba. Her father had fled political turmoil in Cuba, and the family settled into upper-class New York society, giving Mercedes an upbringing steeped in old-world manners, Catholic devotion, and artistic sensibility.
From an early age, de Acosta displayed a fascination with theatre, mysticism, and gender nonconformity; she was known to dress in boyish clothing and asserted an independent, often defiant, personality that distinguished her among her siblings. Her sister Rita de Acosta Lydig became a noted fashion icon, and the family's social prominence placed young Mercedes in contact with the cultural elite of turn-of-the-century New York.
This privileged but complicated childhood — marked by both material comfort and emotional distance from her parents — would shape the poet, playwright, and screenwriter she became. Her birth marks the beginning of a life that would place her at the center of some of the most famous romantic and artistic circles of the twentieth century, including relationships with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Isadora Duncan, and Eva Le Gallienne, and a body of literary and dramatic work that, while often overshadowed by her personal life, reflected her lifelong preoccupation with spirituality, identity, and desire.
Images
