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Sebastian was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. In her youth she hoped to be a dancer and later a film actress. Her family frowned on both ambitions, however, so she fled to New York at the age of 15. Upon her arrival in New York City, Sebastian`s southern drawl was thick enough to "cut with a knife". She followed around theatrical agents before returning at night to a $12-a-month room, after being consistently rejected.

Her first contact in Hollywood was Robert Kane, who gave her a film test at United Studios. She performed in George White`s Scandals with Joan Crawford and Anita Page for a popular series of MGM romantic dramas including Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Blushing Brides (1930). Sebastian also appeared in 1929`s Spite Marriage, wherein she was cast opposite her then-lover Buster Keaton.

Sebastian went into semi-retirement in the mid-1930s after marrying Hopalong Cassidy star William Boyd. They wed in Las Vegas, Nevada following a romance which began on a set at Pathe Pictures. After their divorce in 1935, Sebastian attempted a comeback, appearing in much smaller parts than years before. In 1947, Sebastian married Miami Beach businessman Harold Shapiro to whom she remained married until her death.

In November 1938, Sebastian was found guilty of drunk driving in a Beverly Hills, California Justice Court. She blamed her crash on a reaction of garlic with three or four glasses of wine she consumed four or five hours earlier. She was dining at the home of Buster Keaton. She told the court she believed police assumed from this she had been drinking even more recently. She was given a 30-day suspended jail sentence and paid a fine of $75.

Sebastian was denied an award of $10,000 from a San Diego court in 1940. She appeared at a Red Cross benefit in San Francisco in 1937, and failed to pay her hotel bill. She contended the promoter should have met the expense. An employee of the Plaza Hotel took out the suit, charging "defrauding an innkeeper". The State Supreme Court of California reversed the decision, which awarded her the money on grounds of malicious prosecution.

Sebastian died of cancer in 1957 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.[1] She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.