This buxom brunette landed in Hollywood after winning the Miss Ohio State popularity contest. Raised on a farm in rural Ohio by her widowed mother, Jean Peters made her feature film debut opposite Tyrone Power as his sultry lover in Henry King's superb swashbuckler "Captain From Castile" (1947). Although she was only in films for less than a decade, Peters lent her presence to several well-made productions, mostly at 20th Century Fox. She received above the title billing for her turn as female pirate in the somewhat silly "Anne of the Indies" (1951). The actress fared better opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's "Viva Zapata!" (1952) and had one of her best roles as a grifter's moll caught up in international intrigue in Samuel Fuller's exceptional noir "Pickup on South Street" (1953). Peters also acquitted herself well as a business executive romanced by Rossano Brazzi in Jean Negulesco's splashy "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954). After delivering a well-received turn as the tubercular wife of Richard Todd's clergyman who eventually becomes the chaplain of the US Senate in "A Man Called Peter", she disappeared from the screen.

In 1957, Peters secretly married film producer and businessman Howard Hughes. She has steadfastly refused to comment on her life with Hughes beyond stating that she attended UCLA as a psychology major. Peters returned to acting after nearly 20 years as the star of a 1973 public television production of Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio". The still attractive actress won good notices, but has only made two subsequent small screen appearances, in the NBC miniseries "Arthur Hailey's 'The Moneychangers'" (1976) and the Biblical epic "Peter and Paul" (CBS, 1981). The latter was produced by her third husband, Stanley Hough.