Leslie Caron

Leslie Claire Margaret Caron, born on July 1, 1931, in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Seine (now Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), is a French and American actress and dancer. Her father, Claude Caron, was a French chemist, pharmacist, perfumer, and boutique owner who founded the artisanal perfumier Guermantes, while her mother, Margaret, was an American dancer who had performed on Broadway. Caron's great-grandfather, Ernest Caron, was a distinguished Parisian politician of the Belle Époque, and her grandmother Andrée Caron was a grandchild of Armand Savalle, the global still maker. Her older brother, Dr. Aimery Caron, followed their father into chemistry. Caron's mother directed her toward a performing career from childhood, enrolling her in ballet training rather than the elite convent school path that typically led students toward wealthy marriages. The family lost its fortune during World War II, a loss that profoundly affected her mother, who became depressed, developed alcoholism, and died by suicide in her sixties.

Caron began her professional life as a ballerina, performing with Roland Petit's Ballet des Champs-Élysées. It was there that Gene Kelly discovered her and cast her opposite him in the MGM musical An American in Paris (1951), a role originally intended for Cyd Charisse before Charisse became pregnant. The film marked Caron's screen debut and led to a seven-year contract with MGM. Having grown up in Paris during the German occupation, which left her malnourished and anemic, Caron found the prosperity of California a significant cultural adjustment. Kelly, who nicknamed her "Lester the Pester" and "kid," helped her adapt to filmmaking, as she had never previously spoken on stage.

Her early MGM films included The Man with a Cloak (1951) with Joseph Cotten and Barbara Stanwyck, Glory Alley (1952), and The Story of Three Loves (1953). Her portrayal of an orphan in Lili (1953), opposite Mel Ferrer, earned her a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and nominations for both an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe. She continued as a leading lady in The Glass Slipper (1955), Daddy Long Legs (1955) with Fred Astaire, and Gigi (1958) with Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier. Dissatisfied with the musical genre despite her success in it, Caron studied the Stanislavski method and pursued more dramatic work. In the 1960s she transitioned into European productions, most notably The L-Shaped Room (1962), a British drama in which she played a single pregnant woman. That performance earned her the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and a second Academy Award nomination. Other notable films from this period include Fanny (1961), Guns of Darkness (1962), and Father Goose (1964) with Cary Grant.

Caron's later film work spanned several decades and included Is Paris Burning? (1966), Ken Russell's Valentino (1977) in which she portrayed silent-screen actress Alla Nazimova, Louis Malle's Damage (1992), Funny Bones (1995) with Jerry Lewis and Oliver Platt, Chocolat (2000), and Le Divorce (2003), directed by James Ivory. During the 1980s she appeared in multiple episodes of the television soap opera Falcon Crest as Nicole Sauguet. In 2007, her guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which she portrayed heiress and rape victim Lorraine Delmas, earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. In 2016, she appeared in the ITV series The Durrells as the Countess Mavrodaki, a production overseen by her son Christopher Hall. A documentary about her life, Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star, directed by Larry Weinstein, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on June 28, 2016.

Beyond film and television, Caron has been active in stage and concert work. In 1984, she appeared on Broadway in the musical On Your Toes. In February 2010, she played Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, a production that also featured Greta Scacchi and Lambert Wilson. In 1967, she served as a jury member at the 5th Moscow International Film Festival, and in 1989 she was a jury member at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival. On December 8, 2009, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star at 6153 Hollywood Boulevard.

In her personal life, Caron married American George Hormel II in September 1951; they divorced in 1954. Her second marriage, to British theatre director Peter Hall in 1956, produced two children: Christopher John Hall, a television drama producer, and Jennifer Caron Hall, a writer, painter, and actress. Caron and Hall divorced in 1965. In 1969, she married producer Michael Laughlin. Among the awards Caron has received over her career are a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to two Academy Award nominations.