French ballet dancer Leslie Caron was discovered by legendary MGM star Gene Kelly during his search for a co-star in one of the finest musicals ever filmed, the Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951). Her gamine looks and pixie-like appeal were ideal for Cinderella-type rags-to-riches stories. Combined with her fluid dancing skills, she became one of the top foreign musical talents of the 1950s...and her triple-threat talents as a singer, dancer and actress sustained her long after the musical film's "golden age" had passed.
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron was born on July 1, 1931. Her father, Claude Caron, was a French chemist, and her American-born mother, Margaret Petit, had been a ballet dancer back in the States during the 1920s. Leslie herself began taking dance lessons at age 11 until the Nazi occupation forced her and her brother to flee to Cannes with her grandparents. She later returned to Paris and attended the Convent of the Assumption.
Continuing her dance training at the National Conservatory, she became a 16-year-old member of the Ballet des Champs-Élysées where she greatly impressed her teachers. Cast in the ballet "La Recontre" in 1948, Gene Kelly saw her in the production and was entranced. Luckily for her, he remembered that performance two years later when he returned to Paris in search for a dancing unknown to introduce in his newest musical film. A few more forgettable film roles came and went until she returned triumphantly in a non-musical adaptation of a highly successful 1954 stage musical. Fanny (1961) was blessed with gorgeous cinematography, a touching script and the continental flavor of veterans Maurice Chevalier, Salvatore Baccaloni and Charles Boyer.
As its centerpiece, the child-like Leslie (at age 30!) was mesmerizing as a young girl with child, deserted by her sailor/boyfriend (Horst Buchholz). Even more adult in nature, she played a pregnant woman abandoned again, this time a French refugee, in the shattering drama The L-Shaped Room (1962), which earned her a second British Film Academy trophy and a second Oscar nomination. On stage Leslie earned applause in another Audrey Hepburn vehicle, "Ondine," in 1961. While the mid-1960s and 1970s saw her film career take a downhill detour amid a number of nothing-special comedies opposite the likes of Rock Hudson, Cary Grant and Warren Beatty, and in mediocre foreign pictures, she began seeking out work on American TV.
In the 80s appeared in stage production of "On Your Toes" and "One for the Tango". Her private life has been more turbulent than expected. She is divorced from the late meat packing heir and musician Geordie Hormel; from avant-garde Royald Shakespeare director Peter Hall, by whom she had two children, Christopher and Jennifer; and from her Chandler (1971) producer Michael Laughlin. Many years down the road she subsequently married the director of Chandler (1971), Paul Magwood, but that marriage too would not survive.
One of the few MGM post-musical stars to enjoy a formidable dramatic career, and is still continuing today on an infrequent basis, she has more recently been spotted in such popular crossover foreign films as Chocolat (2000), and in Kate Hudson's romantic comedy/drama Le divorce (2003). At age 75 Leslie won her first Emmy Award with her very moving portrayal of an elderly woman and closeted rape victim in a 2006 episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit".