Actress Menken: folks, if you’re doing the New York Times crossword and you’re getting stuck on the answer for "Actress Menken" then the answer is "Adah Isaacs" Menken, the first Jewish American superstar.

More on Menken here:

Today, celebrities such as Madonna, Wilt Chamberlain
          and Warren Beatty are as well known for their defiance of conventional
          values and the notoriety that surrounds their personal lives as they
          are for their professional accomplishments. It was more than a century
          ago that Adah Isaacs Menken, the first American Jewish "superstar,"
          helped pioneer the art of cultivating an outsized, even outrageous,
          personality as a path to fame and fortune. Even fame, however, could
          not guarantee her happiness.
       

In the 1860’s, Menken earned world fame in an equestrian melodrama,
          "Mazeppa." She daringly appeared on stage playing the role
          of a man, wearing nothing but a flesh-colored body stocking, riding
          a horse on a ramp that extended into the audience. Menken’s costume
          scandalized "respectable" critics—even as it attracted
          huge and enthusiastic audiences that included such notables as Walt
          Whitman and the great Shakespearean actor, Edwin Booth.