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Back to Biographies Leslie Caron Leslie Caron shot to fame as the captivating gamine dancing with Gene Kelly in the 1951 Gershwin-scored musical film An American in Paris. The daughter of a French father and an American mother, Ms. Caron's childhood ambition was to be a dancer. She took ballet classes from the age of ten, later joining the Ballet des Champs-Elysées. It was there that she was spotted by Gene Kelly, who was looking for a French actress who could also dance, sing, and speak good English. The extraordinary success of An American in Paris made Leslie Caron an international celebrity and won her an MGM contract. Over the next few years, with further hits that included Lili (for which she received an Oscar nomination) and Gigi (a part originally intended for Audrey Hepburn), she rose to become MGM's biggest continental star. By the 1960s, feeling typecast by the lightweight musical comedy roles she was being offered, she took on the role of a pregnant single woman in the 1963 British drama The L-Shaped Room. Her performance earned her a British Academy Award and her second Oscar nomination. Among her other films are The Glass Slipper, Daddy Long Legs, Gaby, The Man Who Understood Women, Austerlitz, Fanny, Father Goose, Promise Her Anything, Paris brûie-t-il?, L'homme qui aimait les femmes, Valentino, Goldengirl, Chanel Solitaire, Courage Mountain, Damage, Jean Renoir, The Genius, That's Entertainment III, Funny Bones, Let It Be Me, and, most recently, The Reef. Ms. Caron's television credits include QB VII, Master of the Game, The Man Who Lived at the Ritz, Danielle Steele's The Ring, and a notable guest appearance on the television series Falcon Crest in 1981. She has appeared on stage in Europe and the United States, recorded the speaker's part in Claude Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, and made several spoken recordings, including Colette's Gigi (in English) and selected texts by Colette (also in English) recorded in public at Merken Concert Hall at Abraham Goodman House in New York in 1996. Leslie Caron now lives in the Bourgogne region of France, where she owns a restaurant. While devoting much of her time to this business, she continues to make occasional film and television appearances. |