Chris Sizemore | 'Three Faces' subject, 89

Chris Costner Sizemore, 89, whose life with multiple-personality disorder became the basis for the best-selling The Three Faces of Eve, died of a heart attack July 24 at a hospice center in Ocala, Fla., said her son, Bobby Sizemore.

She became one of the most famous Americans of the 1950s but under the disguised name. The Three Faces of Eve, which paints Ms. Sizemore as an anguished Southern wife and mother who battles for control of her own mind, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It inspired the 1957 film that earned Joanne Woodward an Oscar for playing the title role, a woman who veers from mousy housewife (Eve White) to reckless barfly (Eve Black) until a sympathetic psychiatrist helps her find her "true" self (Jane) through hypnosis.

Because of the stigma attached to mental illness, Ms. Sizemore retreated from publicity and lived anonymously for much of her life in Northern Virginia while raising a family. "We accepted no invitations and extended none," she later said.

In 1977, she announced herself to the world with her memoir, I'm Eve, which she saw as a corrective to the film. To start with, she had 22 personalities, not three.

Ms. Sizemore later widely lectured on how those with mental illness could serve as functional members of families and communities.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that 2 percent of the population experiences dissociative disorders and that women are more likely than men to be diagnosed. According to experts, the extreme rarity makes it hard to study.

Ms. Sizemore said she did not see "Eve" until 1975, explaining to the Washington Post, "Joanne Woodward did an excellent job of acting. But, after all I've lived through, the movie just seemed so unimportant." - Washington Post