Actress Lauren Bacall never just talked. Or spoke, really. She purred — in that instantly identifiable sexy, throaty growl of hers. It’s the voice that captured a nation the second she appeared in her debut film, 1944’s To Have and Have Not, and uttered the immortal words: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together, and blow.” Humphrey Bogart played Steve. Bacall famously captured him, too.

It’s a testament to Bacall’s diligence that her voice, that cool smoky seduction, was actually — as lore goes — the product of practice and hard work. Director Howard Hawks, who discovered her and turned Bronx native Betty Joan Perske into Hollywood’s Lauren Bacall, allegedly thought her natural voice was too nasal and high. Some reports said he made her shout Shakespeare for hours; Bacall herself noted, at a public appearance in the Nineties, that she “practiced by reading The Robe aloud sitting in my car.”

Bacall was, as astrologer Susie Cox might say, a Virgo through and through. “Virgos’ earthy style shines through with their great sense of discipline and effective work ethic,” Cox writes in her book Susie’s Sun Signs.

And, indeed, in interview after interview, Bacall (born September 16th) makes reference to her steely work ethic. “I love to work. I am not a lady who lunches. I am not a lady who gives soirees,” she told The Sun Herald in Sydney. “I work and that’s what my whole life has really been about.” To Montreal’s The Gazette: “If I didn’t work, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. I hate parties, benefits, openings. I don’t want to be a hostess… It keeps me occupied.” And to the Chicago Tribune: “If I’m not working I’m ready to hang myself. I cannot imagine life without work. I don’t think I could ever spend any length of time with anyone who does not have a job. What do they do?”

But a Virgo’s exacting high standards leads to one of the criticisms frequently lobbed at them, too. Virgos can be extremely critical of others, Cox explains, “which doesn’t go over too well.” Not that this ever bothered Bacall, really. “My standards are high in life — which of course restricts me in many areas,” she said in an interview with the Saturday Evening Post. “I’m very demanding about my kids, my friends, the work I do. I’m demanding about the people I work with, that work for me. If they don’t like it, I can’t help it — that’s life, that’s the way I am. I don’t apologize for it.”

To discover more about this month’s horoscope from Cox, now that we’re in the month of Virgo (August 23rd – September 23rd), keep reading.