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Leslie Caron

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Leslie Caron
Caron in 2009
Born
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron

(1931-07-01) 1 July 1931 (age 93)
Boulogne-sur-Seine, Paris, France
Citizenship
  • France
  • United States
Occupations
  • Actress
  • dancer
Years active1951–2020
Spouses
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(m. 1951; div. 1954)​
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(m. 1956; div. 1965)​
​
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(m. 1969; div. 1980)​
ChildrenChristopher Hall
Jennifer Caron Hall

Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (French: [lɛsli kaʁɔ̃]; born 1 July 1931) is a French and American actress and dancer. She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards.

Caron began her career as a ballerina. She made her film debut in the musical An American in Paris (1951), followed by roles in The Man with a Cloak (1951), Glory Alley (1952) and The Story of Three Loves (1953), before her role of an orphan in Lili (also 1953), which earned her the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and garnered nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

As a leading lady, Caron starred in films such as The Glass Slipper (1955), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Gigi (1958), Fanny (1961), both of which earned her Golden Globe nominations, Guns of Darkness (1962), The L-Shaped Room (1962), Father Goose (1964) and A Very Special Favor (1965). For her role as a single pregnant woman in The L-Shaped Room, Caron, in addition to receiving a second Academy Award nomination, won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and a second BAFTA Award.

Caron's other roles include Is Paris Burning? (1966), The Man Who Loved Women (1977), Valentino (1977), Damage (1992), Funny Bones (1995), Chocolat (2000) and Le Divorce (2003). In 2007, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for portraying heiress and rape victim, Lorraine Delmas, in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Early life and family

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Caron's mother, the ballet dancer Margaret Petit, on the front cover of Theatre Magazine in October 1921.

Caron was born in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Seine (now Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), the daughter of Margaret (née Petit), a Franco-American dancer on Broadway, and Claude Caron, a French chemist, pharmacist, perfumer and boutique owner.[1] Claude Caron was the founder of the artisanal perfumier Guermantes.[2] While her older brother, Aimery Caron, became a chemist like their father, Leslie was prepared for a performing career from childhood by her mother.[3] The family lost its wealth during World War II and could not provide a dowry for Caron. "My mother said: 'There's only one profession that leads you to marrying money and becoming a princess or duchess, and that's ballet.' ... My grandfather whispered heavily: 'Margaret, you want your daughter to be a whore?' I heard it. This has always followed me". [4]

Of the lost fortune, Caron recalled, "My mother died of it". Her mother, who had grown up in poverty, could not cope with their reduced circumstances. She became depressed and an alcoholic and, at age 67, killed herself.[4]

Career

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Caron was initially a ballerina. Gene Kelly discovered her in the Roland Petit company "Ballet des Champs Elysées" and cast her to appear opposite him in the musical An American in Paris (1951), a role for which a pregnant Cyd Charisse was originally cast. The prosperity, sunshine and abundance of California was a cultural shock to Caron. She had lived in Paris during the German occupation, which left her malnourished and anemic. She later remarked how nice people were in comparison to wartime Paris, in which poverty and deprivation had caused people to be bitter and violent. She had a friendly relationship with Kelly, who nicknamed her "Lester the Pester"[5] and "kid". Kelly helped the inexperienced Caron—who had never spoken on stage—adjust to filmmaking.[4].

Her role led to a seven-year MGM contract.[4] The films which followed included the musical The Glass Slipper (1955) and the drama The Man with a Cloak (1951), with Joseph Cotten and Barbara Stanwyck. Still, Caron has said of herself: "Unfortunately, Hollywood considers musical dancers as hoofers. Regrettable expression."[citation needed] She also starred in the musicals Lili (1953, receiving an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination), with Mel Ferrer; Daddy Long Legs (1955), with Fred Astaire; and Gigi (1958) with Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier.

Caron in 1953

Dissatisfied with her career despite her success ("I thought musicals were futile and silly", she said in 2021; "I appreciate them better now"), Caron studied the Stanislavski method.[4] In the 1960s and thereafter, Caron worked in European films as well. For her performance in the British drama The L-Shaped Room (1962), she won the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress and the Golden Globe, and was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.[6] Her other film assignments in this period included Father Goose (1964) with Cary Grant; Ken Russell's Valentino (1977), in the role of silent-screen legend Alla Nazimova; and Louis Malle's Damage (1992). Sometime in 1970, Caron was one of the many actresses considered for the lead role of Eglantine Price in Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, losing the role to British actress Angela Lansbury.

In 1967, she was a member of the jury of the 5th Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF).[7] In 1989, she was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival.[8]

Caron returned to France in the early 1970s, which she later said was a mistake. "They adore someone who's really British or really American", Caron said, "but somebody who's French and has made it in Hollywood – and I was the only one who had really made it in a big way – they can't forgive".[4] During the 1980s, she appeared in several episodes of the soap opera Falcon Crest as Nicole Sauguet. Caron is one of the few actresses from the classic era of MGM musicals who are still active[when?] in film — a group that includes Rita Moreno, Margaret O'Brien and June Lockhart. Caron's later credits include Funny Bones (1995) with Jerry Lewis and Oliver Platt; The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000) with Judi Dench and Cleo Laine; Chocolat (2000) and Le Divorce (2003), directed by James Ivory, with Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts.

On June 30, 2003, Caron travelled to San Francisco to appear as the special guest star in The Songs of Alan Jay Lerner: I Remember It Well, a retrospective concert staged by San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon Company. In 2007, her guest appearance on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit earned her a Primetime Emmy Award. On April 27, 2009, Caron travelled to New York as an honoured guest at a tribute to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe at the Paley Center for Media.[9]

For her contributions to the film industry, Caron was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 8, 2009, with a motion pictures star located at 6153 Hollywood Boulevard.[10] In February 2010, she played Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, which also featured Greta Scacchi and Lambert Wilson.[11]

In 2016, Caron appeared in the ITV television series The Durrells (produced by her son Christopher Hall) as the Countess Mavrodaki.

Veteran documentarian Larry Weinstein's Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on June 28, 2016.[12]

Personal life

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Caron with her son Christopher and Maurice Chevalier on the set of Gigi (1958)

In September 1951, Caron married American George Hormel II, a grandson of George A. Hormel, the founder of the Hormel meat-packing company. They divorced in 1954.[13][14] During that period, while under contract to MGM, she lived in Laurel Canyon in a Normandie style 1927 mansion near the country store on Laurel Canyon Blvd. One bedroom was all mirrored for her dancing rehearsals.[citation needed]

Her second husband was British theatre director Peter Hall. They married in 1956 and had two children: Christopher John Hall, a television drama producer, and Jennifer Caron Hall, a writer, painter and actress. Her son-in-law, married to Jennifer, is Glenn Wilhide, a producer and screenwriter.[citation needed]

Caron had an affair with Warren Beatty in 1961. When she and Hall divorced in 1965, Beatty was named as a co-respondent and was ordered by the London court to pay the costs of the case.[15] In 1969, Caron married Michael Laughlin, the producer of the film Two-Lane Blacktop; the couple divorced in 1980.[citation needed]

Caron was also romantically linked to Dutch television actor Robert Wolders from 1994 to 1995.[16]

From 1981, she rented and lived for a few years in a mill (the "Moulin Neuf") in the French village of Chaumot, Yonne, which had belonged to Prince Francis Xavier of Saxony in the late 18th century and which depended on his princely castle.[17] From June 1993 until September 2009, Caron owned and operated the hotel and restaurant Auberge la Lucarne aux Chouettes (The Owls' Nest), in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, about 130 km (80 mi) south of Paris.[18] Caron's mother had committed suicide in her 60s; suffering from a lifetime of depression, Caron also considered doing so in 1995. She was hospitalized for a month and began attending Alcoholics Anonymous.[4] Unhappy with the lack of acting opportunities in France, she returned to England in 2013.

In her autobiography, Thank Heaven, she states that she obtained American citizenship in time to vote for Barack Obama for president.[19]

In October 2021, she was chosen to receive the Oldie of the Year Award by The Oldie magazine.[20] It had been initially offered to Queen Elizabeth II, who had declined it on the grounds that she did not meet the criteria, even though she was five years older than Caron.[21]

Filmography

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Leslie Caron, A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim, théâtre du Châtelet, 2010
Film
Year Title Role Notes
1951 An American in Paris Lise Bouvier
The Man with a Cloak Madeline Minot
1952 Glory Alley Angela Evans
1953 The Story of Three Loves Mademoiselle Segment: "Mademoiselle"
Lili Lili Daurier BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress
Nominated–Academy Award for Best Actress
1955 The Glass Slipper Ella
Daddy Long Legs Julie Andre
1956 Gaby Gaby
1958 Gigi Gigi Laurel Award for Top Female Musical Performance
Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical
The Doctor's Dilemma Mrs. Dubedat
1959 The Man Who Understood Women Ann Garantier
1960 Austerlitz Mlle de Vaudey
The Subterraneans Mardou Fox
1961 Fanny Fanny Laurel Award for Top Female Dramatic Performance (5th place)
Nominated–Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
1962 Guns of Darkness Claire Jordan
The L-Shaped Room Jane Fosset BAFTA Award for Best British Actress
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
Laurel Award for Top Female Dramatic Performance (3rd place)
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (2nd place)
Nominated–Academy Award for Best Actress
Three Fables of Love Annie Segment: "Les deux pigeons"
1964 Father Goose Catherine
1965 A Very Special Favor Dr. Lauren Boullard
Promise Her Anything Michele O'Brien
1966 Is Paris Burning? Françoise Labé
1967 The Head of the Family Paola, Marco's wife
1970 Madron Sister Mary
1971 Chandler Katherine Creighton
1976 Surreal Estate Céleste
1977 The Man Who Loved Women Véra
Valentino Alla Nazimova
1978 Crazed Nicole
1979 Goldengirl Dr. Sammy Lee
1980 All Stars Lucille Berger
1981 Chanel Solitaire uncredited
1982 Imperative Mother
1984 Dangerous Moves Henia Liebskind
1990 Courage Mountain Jane Hillary
Guns Waitress
1992 Damage Elizabeth Prideaux
1995 Funny Bones Katie Parker
Let It Be Me Marguerite
1999 The Reef Regine De Chantelle
2000 Chocolat Madame Audel Nominated–Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
2003 Le Divorce Suzanne de Persand
2017 The Perfect Age Marguerite short movie
2020 A Christmas Carol The Ghost of Christmas Past (voice)
Television
Year Title Role Notes
1959 ITV Play of the Week Thérèse Tarde Episode: "The Wild Bird"
1968 Off to See the Wizard Ella Episode: "Cinderella's Glass Slipper: Part 1"
1973 Carola Carola Janssen TV film
1974 QB VII Angela Kelno Miniseries
1978 Docteur Erika Werner Erika Werner TV series
1980 Kontrakt Penelope TV film
1981 Mon meilleur Noël La Nuit Episode: "L'oiseau bleu"
1982 Tales of the Unexpected Nathalie Vareille Episode: "Run, Rabbit, Run"
1982 The Unapproachable [pl] Klaudia TV film
1983 Cinéma 16 Alice Episode: "Le château faible"
1984 Master of the Game Solange Dunas
1986 The Love Boat Mrs. Duvall Episode: "The Christmas Cruise"
1987 Falcon Crest Nicole Sauget 3 episodes
1988 Lenin: The Train Nadia TV film
1988 The Man Who Lived at the Ritz Coco Chanel TV film
1994 Normandy: The Great Crusade Osmont, Mary-Louise (voice)
1996 The Ring Madame de Saint Marne
1996 The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century Czarina Aleksandra Romanov (voice) 3 episodes
2000 The Last of the Blonde Bombshells Madeleine TV film
2001 Murder on the Orient Express Sra. Alvarado
2006 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Lorraine Delmas Episode: "Recall"
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series
2013 Jo Josette Lenoir Episode: "Le Marais"
2016–2018 The Durrells Countess Mavrodaki 6 episodes
2020 Written on the Water Pauline TV film

Theatre

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Recordings

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Bibliography

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  • Caron, Leslie: Vengeance. Doubleday, 1982. ISBN 978-0-3851-7896-9
  • Caron, Leslie: Thank Heaven: A Memoir. Viking Adult, 2009. ISBN 978-0-6700-2134-5

Honors

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Kisselgoff, Anna (March 12, 1995). "DANCE; The Ballerina in Leslie Caron The Actress". The New York Times.
  2. ^ "Guermantes", Perfume Intelligence. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  3. ^ "Leslie Caron Biography". Fandango. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Hattenstone, Simon (June 21, 2021). "'I am very shy. It's amazing I became a movie star': Leslie Caron at 90 on love, art and addiction". The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 22, 2021.
  5. ^ Stamberg, Susan (November 29, 2012). "Leslie Caron: Dancing From WWII Paris To Hollywood". Morning Edition. NPR. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  6. ^ Kennedy, Matthew (February 2010). Thank Heaven: A Memoir, by Leslie Caron Archived June 16, 2013, at archive.today. Bright Lights Film Journal Issue 67.
  7. ^ "5th Moscow International Film Festival (1967)". MIFF. Archived from the original on January 16, 2013. Retrieved December 9, 2012.
  8. ^ "Berlinale: 1989 Juries". Berlinale. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
  9. ^ "The Musicals of Lerner & Loewe: An Evening of Song and Television". The Paley Center for Media. April 27, 2009. Archived from the original on June 28, 2009.
  10. ^ "Leslie Caron". Hollywood Walk of Fame. Archived from the original on April 3, 2016. Retrieved February 11, 2018.
  11. ^ "Leslie Caron Receives Walk of Fame Star". KCAL News. December 8, 2009. Archived from the original on December 11, 2009.
  12. ^ "Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star", TIFF Cinematheque Special Screenings: Summer 2016, June 28, 2016, archived from the original on June 19, 2016, retrieved May 31, 2016
  13. ^ Mower County History Committee (1984). Mill on the Willow: A History of Mower County, Minnesota. Lake Mills, Iowa: Graphic Pub. Co. p. 295.
  14. ^ "Hormel Son and French Dancer Wed". Minneapolis Star. September 24, 1951. p. 2. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  15. ^ Rich, Frank (July 3, 1978). "Warren Beatty Strikes Again". Time. Archived from the original on November 14, 2007.
  16. ^ "Biography for Leslie Caron". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on February 26, 2009. Retrieved November 11, 2008.
  17. ^ Jim Serre Djouhri, "De Hollywood au Moulin Neuf, dans les pas de l'actrice Leslie Caron", Bulletin des Etudes Villeneuviennes n °57, Société Historique, Archéologique, Artistique et Culturelle des Amis du Vieux Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, 2022.
  18. ^ Spano, Susan (October 15, 2006). "French inn: Her latest stage". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 6, 2007.
  19. ^ Caron, Leslie (November 25, 2009). Thank Heaven: A Memoir. New York: Viking Adult. ISBN 978-0-6700-2134-5.
  20. ^ Vickers, Hugo (October 19, 2021). "Leslie Caron, the Oldie of the Year". The Oldie.
  21. ^ Davies, Caroline (October 19, 2021). "'You are as old as you feel': Queen declines Oldie of the Year award". The Guardian. London. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  22. ^ "Ondine". BBC Genome. Retrieved June 21, 2021.
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