The groundbreaking actress who paved the way for Tinseltown beauties such as Halle Berry, Dorothy Dandridge, Angela Bassett and for versatile entertainers such as Diana Ross, Della Reese and Diahann Carroll died on Sunday night.

Lena Horne – best known for being the first black performer signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio – passed away at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.

The Brooklyn NY native was 92.

Her death was confirmed to the media by her son-in-law, Kevin Buckley.

She was one of the greatest and most versatile entertainers who ever lived.
Horne, who starred in numerous movie musical such as 'Ziegfeld Follies,' 'The Duke Is Tops,' 'Cabin in the Sky,' 'The Wiz' and most notably 'Stormy Weather,' has been mostly reclusive within the past decade.

In 1997 she appeared in a commercial for Gap Jeans.

Most recently, there were reports that in the wake of Janet Jackson's 2004 Superbowl wardrobe malfunction, the Horne family preferred another actress to portray her in a proposed television biopic to be produced by Oprah Winfrey. Twelve-time Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys' name has been bandied about.

There's also talk of a Broadway-bound musical version of 'Stormy Weather,' which Emmy Award winner Leslie Uggams has already been attached to.

Coming up in an era where America didn't recognize black people as equal, Horne and contemporaries such as Paul Robeson, refused to settle for the status quo. Both became staunch advocates for equality; they often put their careers on the line for justice. Horne believed she had been blacklisted for her outspokenness of how black soldiers were treated during World War II.

Moving away from the racial dynamics of Hollywood studio movies during the early 1950s, she flourished in television, theater and in music.

A revered chanteuse who performed with great jazz luminaries such as Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw, Horne released a string of recordings for the RCA Victor label. Her recording, 'An Evening With Lena Horne,' was released in 1995 via Blue Note Records. It won the Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance.

While Horne is known for breaking down barriers in Hollywood, she also blazed trails in Broadway with the 1934 musical 'Dance With Your Gods,' 1957's 'Jamaica' and the Tony Award winning tour de force 'Lena Horne: The Lady And Her Music,' which also netted two Grammy Awards in 1982.

"She's in transcendent voice and, at age 63, as beautiful and elegant as ever," Frank Rich wrote in his New York Times review of the show in 1981.

"I'm me, and I'm like nobody else," Horne said in a 1997 PBS interview.

Horne's roots continue to run deep: Her former son-in-law Sidney Lumet is an acclaimed director ('12 Angry Men,' 'Serpico') who helmed 'The Wiz,' the glitzy $40 million spectacle so many know and love, which she starred Horne as Glinda the Good Witch. Her granddaughter, Jenny Lumet, wrote the screenplay to the 2008 film 'Rachel Getting Married,' which starred Anne Hathaway. The sometimes-actress most recently interviewed 'Twilight' star Robert Pattinson for Details magazine, during which he made controversial remarks about race and sex. She was married to rising actor Bobby Cannavale. Another granddaughter, Amy Lumet, was married to best-selling author P.J. O'Rourke.

A cause of death was not known at deadline.