Events

A ballerina with Roland Petit’s Ballet des Champs-Élysées, Leslie Caron was not yet 20 when cast by Gene Kelly as his gamine-like leading lady in An American in Paris. And suddenly this convent-educated Parisienne was a major Hollywood star, partnering Fred Astaire in Daddy Long Legs, melting hearts as the waifish Lili (her first Oscar nomination), and starring in the decade’s most lavish movie musical, Gigi. But this was only the first part of a seven-decade stage, screen and television career that saw her graduate to more adult parts with her Oscar-nominated role as a pregnant single girl in The L-Shaped Room; romanced on screen by Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Maurice Chevalier, and Warren Beatty; directed by Vincente Minnelli, Raoul Walsh, Louis Malle, Abel Gance, François Truffaut, and, on stage, Jean Renoir; and win a 2007 Emmy for playing a rape victim on Law and Order: SVU. (Coming full circle this year, she played the grandmother in the Paris production of A Little Night Music, a part originated by Hermione Gingold, Gigi’s own grandmama.).