Apparently, Ava Gardner once met J. R. R. Tolkien and didn't know who he was - but he didn't know who she was, either, so I guess that's fair. One writer she did know really well was Ernest Hemingway, whom she was good friends with. She starred in three movies based on his writing - The Sun Also Rises, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Killers. Oh, and according to Wikipedia she also swam naked in Hemingway's pool, prompting him to tell his staff, "The water is not to be emptied".
