Though her run as a Hollywood film actress lasted just a short time, Grace Kelly earned coveted awards before she gave up her career at 26 to marry a prince.
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She won seven awards for her big-screen roles, including three Golden Globes and an Academy Award.
Kelly was admitted into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York in 1947 and made her Broadway debut at 19 in “The Father." By 1951, she got a small part in “Fourteen Hours” and caught the eye of actor Gary Cooper. The next year, she co-starred with him in “High Noon,” and her career took off.
She signed a seven-year movie contract, and in 1953, she went to Kenya to film “Mogambo” with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. She won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and the film brought her first Academy Award nomination.
Her cool, blonde exterior and sex appeal captured the attention of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock enough for him to give her a starring role in three of his films – “Dial M For Murder,” “Rear Window,” and “To Catch a Thief.” Hitchcock described her as “a snow-covered volcano” – demure and seductive at the same time,
Vanity Fair said in a 2010 article.
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When she was cast as a dowdy wife in 1954’s “The Country Girl,” even co-star Bing Crosby questioned whether she could pull off playing someone frumpy. “She’s too pretty,” Kelly quoted Crosby to her biographer,
“High Society” author Donald Spoto. “He almost withdrew from the picture when he heard that I was going to play the part.”
But Kelly won an Academy Award for her performance, beating out expected front-runner Judy Garland, the lead in “A Star Is Born.”
In 1955, she met Prince Rainier III of Monaco on a photo shoot at the Cannes Film Festival. He pursued her hand in marriage and offered her an award that would take her away from Hollywood: the title of “Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco."
For a time, it seemed her story would end as a fairytale. But her death from a car accident in 1982 put a tragic spin on her story, the website said.
Today, more than three decades since her death, she may be best known for her iconic style. She will forever be remembered as a white-gloved, gown-wearing goddess – frozen in time as a captivating princess.
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