Shirley Temple Black, the former child star turned international diplomat, has passed away at the age of 85. The BBC was first to report on her passing, after a statement was released by her family.Temple signed her first film contract at the age of three, and starred in dozens of Hollywood movies before she was even a teenager, quickly becoming one of the biggest bankable box office stars of the 1930s. (In 1934, she was given the first special "juvenile" Academy Award, that was also a miniature version of the famous Oscar statue.) She was known as much for her trademark ringlet curls as she was for her remarkable singing and dancing, but retired from show business almost completely before she was 25.In the late 1960s, having long since retired to marry and raise a family, Temple got in to politics, running unsuccessfully for Congress. However, that effort brought her to the attention of prominent Republican Party members, including President Richard Nixon, who appointed her to be a U.N. diplomat. In 1974, she was made the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, and in 1989 she was given another ambassadorship by George H.W. Bush, this time to Czechoslovakia.Her second marriage, to Conrad Black, a Naval officer from a prominent California family, lasted 54 years until his death in 2005.(thewire.com)ANN.Az