The soap opera life of screen star Zsa Zsa Gabor

Her extraordinary life sounds more like the plot from a soap opera, with unexpected twists, turns – and even in death Zsa Zsa Gabor has retained an air of mystery.

No one is completely sure how old she was, or even how many husbands she had.

The Hollywood actress and socialite, better known for her string of marriages than her screen work, died just weeks before what was expected to be her 100th birthday.

The Hungarian-born star was probably better known for her complicated private life than her work on-screen with even her most devoted admirer, the late director Michael Winner, saying she largely played a thinly-veiled version of herself.

A one-woman walking soap opera, most of the facts of her life are in dispute including exactly when she was born and how many times she was married.

It is widely believed she was born in 1917 in Budapest, but she also claimed to have been born in 1930, although critics pointed out that would have made her seven when she married her first husband.

Her last husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, is thought to have been her ninth although she said he was the eighth as she did not count her marriage to Mexican actor Felipe de Alba because it was the shipboard ceremony was quickly annulled after a matter of a few hours. Meanwhile Frederic insisted he was the 10th.

Either way it was he who announced her death on Sunday after suffering a heart attack in their home in Bel-Air, Los Angeles. She started her career in the 1940s and went from being a beauty queen, to millionaire's wife to major public figure.

What is beyond dispute is that Gabor lived most of her life in the spotlight and came to be the personification of a certain kind of Hollywood celebrity – eccentric, over the top and never shy of a camera lens.

The former beauty queen went to Hollywood in 1952 and built a career based on her glamorous looks.

Her first film was called Lovely To Look At. She followed that with a comedy, We're Not Married!, whose title could not have been less appropriate for the women who counted Hollywood actor George Sanders and businessman Conrad Hilton among her former husbands.

Other roles include appearances in B-movies including The Girl In The Kremlin and Queen Of Outer Space.

Her sisters, Magda and Eva, also found fame as actresses and socialites.

She was a regular on talk shows on both sides of the Atlantic where she could be relied upon to name-drop and reminisce about her colourful love life – all in her distinctive European accent.

In 1989 she made the headlines for different reasons when she ended up in court accused of slapping a Beverly Hills police officer who stopped her for driving her white Rolls-Royce without a valid licence.

The late Michael Winner, who directed her in the 1976 film Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, once described her as largely playing a thinly-veiled version of herself. Speaking before his death in 2013, he said: "She played Zsa Zsa Gabor the actress in real life. I thought she had great wit and charm. She was a perfectly reasonable actress, not a great actress but she was perfect in those early comedies.

"She played a glamorous Hungarian. She wouldn't have been able to play Juliet or be in Hamlet but was perfect for those films.

"Her private life is the equal to those characters in soap operas today but they do not hold a candle to her. Compared to Zsa Zsa Gabor they are just empty shells."

As well as her lavish lifestyle, Zsa Zsa Gabor was also known for wit, commenting on marriage in general: "I am a marvellous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house."

One of her last interviews was given to the magazine Vanity Fair in 2007.

She said very little in it, but did find time for a withering put-down of Paris Hilton, her great niece – the woman many people would say was her modern-day reincarnation.

Hilton, she said was 'rather silly', adding: "She does too many things for publicity."

In 2002 she was involved in a serious car accident which reports said left her mostly confined to a wheelchair, and she then suffered a stroke in 2005. In 2011 she was admitted to hospital for a leg infection, which resulted in the amputation of her right leg.

Her relationship with her late daughter Francesca Hilton remained strained until Francesca's death at 67 in 2015.

Zsa Zsa is survived by Prince Frederic who she married in 1986, making it her longest marriage to date.