After an early and brief film career in Germany; which included a controversial film Ecstasy (1933); Lamarr fled from her husband; a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer and secretly moved to Paris. There; she met MGM head Louis B. Mayer; who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood; where she became a film star from the late 1930s to the 1950s.

Lamarr appeared in numerous popular feature films; including Algiers (1938); I Take This Woman (1940); Comrade X (1940); Come Live With Me (1941); H.M. Pulham; Esq. (1941); and Samson and Delilah (1949).

At the beginning of World War II; Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes; which used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Though the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s; the principles of their work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi; CDMA; and Bluetooth technology; and this work led to their being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.