Ayn Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire. Rand was a bright child, who felt unchallenged with school and began writing screenplays when she was eight and novels when she was 10. Her family fled to the Crimean Peninsula during the Russian Civil War and returned after it ended. Rand was then one of the first women to enroll in Petrograd State University. After graduating in 1924, she studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. Then in 1925, Rand received a visa to visit relatives in Chicago. Rand was enamored with American life and wanted to become a screenwriter, so she moved to Hollywood. On Rand’s second day in Hollywood, movie producer Cecil B. DeMille offered her a ride to the back lot of his studio and gave her a job as an extra in The King of Kings. DeMille later gave Rand a job as a junior screenwriter. Rand married Frank O’Connor in 1929 and became an American citizen two years later. She worked a variety of jobs to support her writing, including the head of the costume department at RKO Studios.