Leslie Caron (IPA: [lɛsli kaʁɔ̃]) (born July 1, 1931) is an Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning, and Emmy-nominated motion picture actress and dancer. Caron has said of herself: "I'm not a ballerina. I'm a hoofer."
She was born Leslie Claire Margaret Caron in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, to Claude Caron, a French chemist, and Margaret Petit, an American dancer. Caron was prepared for a performing career from childhood by her mother.
She was discovered by Gene Kelly while dancing with a ballet troupe. The famed dancer chose her to appear opposite him in the classic musical An American in Paris (1951). This led to a long-term MGM contract and a string of films: The Glass Slipper (1955), Gaby (1956).
She went on to star in Daddy Long Legs (1955) with Fred Astaire, Gigi (1958) with Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier, and Lili.
In 1953, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Lili. In 1963, she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best...
Created by dipity on Feb 7, 2008
Last updated: 03/11/10 at 07:30 PM
Le Divorce is a 2003 Merchant Ivory Productions' film directed by James Ivory. Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala & James Ivory based on Diane Johnson's bestselling novel. The two leading roles were originally going to be played by Natalie Portman and Winona Ryder, but both dropped out a few weeks before filming began.
It tells the story of a young American woman Isabel Walker who travels to Paris to visit her pregnant sister Roxy (Roxeanne). Roxy's husband Charles-Henri left her for his lover Magda Tellman. Later on, Isabel secretly falls in love with her French uncle-in-law Edgar Cosset and becomes his mistress.
StarringRest of Cast in Order of AppearanceLe Divorce was filmed in Paris at locations including Café de Flore, Tour Eiffel, Musée du Louvre and Salle Gaveau (concert sequence, Alan Ewing and uncredited Les Arts Florissants member performed Marc-Antoine Charpentier's "Pleurons plutôt de présentes douleurs" from "Il faut rire et chanter: Dispute de bergers, H. 484" which...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306734
Valentino is an Anglo-American biographical drama film about the life of Rudolph Valentino, directed by Ken Russell. It is based on the book Valentino, an Intimate Exposé of the Sheik, written by Chaw Mank and Brad Steiger....
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076868
Father Goose is a 1964 romantic comedy film set in World War II, starring Cary Grant and Leslie Caron.
During the early days of World War II, South Pacific beachcomber Walter Eckland (Grant) is coerced by his old friend, Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard), into becoming a coast-watcher for the Allies. He is escorted to a deserted island, to watch for Japanese planes passing overhead. As incentive, whisky is hidden in various spots around the island; every time he reports a sighting, he is rewarded with directions to a bottle. To further ensure he stays put, when Houghton leaves, his naval vessel "accidentally" hits Walter's boat, punching a gaping hole in its hull.
Later, Houghton finds a replacement. The only problem is, Walter has to retrieve him from a nearby island in enemy-infested waters. When Walter goes there in a dinghy, he unexpectedly finds Frenchwoman Catherine Frenau (Caron) and seven young schoolgirls under her care stranded there. She informs him that the man...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058092
The L-Shaped Room is a 1962 film, directed by Bryan Forbes, which tells the story of a young French woman, unmarried and pregnant, who moves into a London apartment building, befriending a young man in the building. It stars Leslie Caron and Tom Bell.
The movie was adapted by Bryan Forbes from the novel by Lynne Reid Banks.
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (Leslie Caron).
The L-Shaped Room follows a young French girl, Jane (Leslie Caron), who arrives alone at a boarding house in Fulham, London. Beautiful and withdrawn, she encounters the residents of her house through the meandering first act of the film, each a social outsider in their own way.
Jane is pregnant, we learn, and has no desire to marry the father. On her first visit to a doctor, she wants to find out if she really is pregnant and consider her options. The doctor's facile assumption that she must want either marriage or an abortion so insults her that she determines to have the child.
The Smiths...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057239
Fanny is a 1961 film which tells the story of a young man torn between leaving his boring life for adventures at sea, or staying behind with the girl he loves. It stars Leslie Caron, Horst Buchholz, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and Lionel Jeffries.
The movie was adapted by Julius J. Epstein from the musical play Fanny by S. N. Behrman, Joshua Logan, and Harold Rome, which in turn had been adapted from the plays Fanny, Marius and César by Marcel Pagnol. It was directed by Logan.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Charles Boyer), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Harold Rome), Best Cinematography, Color (Jack Cardiff), and Best Film Editing (William Reynolds).
...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054866
Gigi is a 1958 motion picture musical set in Paris, France. The screenplay was written by Alan Jay Lerner and the music was composed by Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music). It is based on the bestselling novella of the same name by French author, Colette, which was first adapted for the screen with Danièle Delorme in 1948. In 1951, Anita Loos adapted the novel as a play for the stage, and the Broadway production starred Audrey Hepburn in her first major role. Seven years later, producer Arthur Freed approached Lerner about writing a feature film musical adaptation.
Gigi proved to be a major critical and commercial success and the winner of nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In 1991 Gigi was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It is considered the last great MGM musical, and the last great achievement of the Freed Unit, headed by producer Arthur Freed, although he would go on to produce several more films, including...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051658
Daddy Long Legs is a 1955 Hollywood musical comedy film set in France and stars Fred Astaire, Leslie Caron, Fred Clark and Thelma Ritter, with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The screenplay was written by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron, loosely based on the novel Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The film was directed by Jean Negulesco.
It was one of Astaire's personal favourites, largely due to the script which, for once, directly addresses the complications inherent in a love affair between a young woman and a man thirty years her senior. However, the making it was marred by his wife's death from lung cancer. Deeply traumatised, Astaire offered to pay the production expenses already incurred in order to quit the project, but then changed his mind.
This was the first of three consecutive Astaire films set in France (the others being Funny Face and Silk Stockings), following the fashion for French-themed musicals established by ardent Francophile Gene Kelly with An American in...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047969
The film stars Leslie Caron as Cinderella, and Michael Wilding as the Prince, with Keenan Wynn, Estelle Winwood, Elsa Lanchester, Barry Jones, Lurene Tuttle, Liliane Montevecchi and Walter Pidgeon as Narrator.
Ella (Leslie Caron), who is sometimes teased as "Cinderella", is a lonely and misunderstood young woman who lives in a principality somewhere in Europe. An orphan who has become an almost-servant to her stepmother the Widow Sonder (Elsa Lanchester), and her stepsisters, Berdina (Amanda Blake) and Serafina (Lisa Daniels), she is shunned by the townspeople because of her anti-social behavior and her regular boasting that before she was born a gypsy woman told her late mother that she would live in the Palace one day.
Prince Charles (Michael Wilding) is the son of the Duke (Barry Jones) who rules the principality. The Prince has been studying at the University of Paris for many years and has just returned. The Duke is delighted to have his son home again and he decides to hold...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048124
Lili is a 1953 American film. Considered one among many classic MGM releases, it stars Leslie Caron as a touchingly naïve French girl, whose emotional relationship with a carnival puppeteer is conducted through the medium of four puppets. The screenplay by Helen Deutsch was adapted from "The Man Who Hated People," a short story by Paul Gallico which appeared in the October 28, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Following the film's success, Gallico expanded his story into a 1954 novella entitled The Love of Seven Dolls.
It won the Academy Award for Original Music Score and was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Caron), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Color), Best Cinematography (Color), Best Director (Charles Walters) and Best Original Screenplay.
Leslie Caron and Mel Ferrer's rendition of "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" was released as a single and became a minor hit, reaching #30 on the pop music charts.
The New York Times included it in their 2004 Guide to the Best 1,000...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046000
An American in Paris is a 1951 musical film inspired by the 1928 classical composition by George Gershwin. Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant, the film is set in Paris, and was directed by Vincente Minnelli from a script by Alan Jay Lerner. The choreography is by Gene Kelly. All the music is by George and Ira Gershwin. The climax is an 18 minute ballet featuring Kelly and Caron and set to Gershwin's An American in Paris. The ballet alone cost more than half a million dollars, a staggering sum in those days.Jerry Mulligan (Kelly) is an exuberant American expatriate trying to make a living in Paris as a painter. His friend Adam (Levant) is a struggling pianist who's a long time associate of a famous singer, Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary). A lonely society woman (Nina Foch) takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, only to have Jerry fall for Lise (Leslie Caron), a French girl he meets at a restaurant. Lise loves him as well, but she is already in a relationship with...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043278
Leslie Caron was born
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