The Most Beautiful Actress Ever

Grace Patricia Kelly was born on November 12, 1929, in
Philadelphia where she grew up in the East Falls section,
While attending the prestigious Ravenhill Academy, Grace
modeled fashions at local social events with her mother and
sisters. She gained her first acting experience at the age
of 12, when she played a lead role in Don't Feed the
Animals, a play produced by the Old Academy Players in East
Falls. Eventually she would be named the most beautiful
actress in the world.

Her dream was to become an actress, so much so that she left
for New York right after high school graduation in 1947. She
found some modeling work, appeared on magazine covers,
studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, and acted
on Broadway and on TV. Her early acting pursuits led her to
the stage, most notably a Broadway debut in Strindberg’s The
Father alongside Raymond Massey. At 19, her graduation
performance was in The Philadelphia Story, a role with which
she would also end her film career.

Kelly made her film debut in a small role in the 1951 film
Fourteen Hours. The small role led to many offers, all of
which she turned down for independence and another chance at
the theater. She was performing in Colorado’s notable Elitch
Gardens when she received a telegram from Hollywood producer
Stanley Kramer, offering her the starring role opposite Gary
Cooper in High Noon. According to biographer Wendy Leigh, at
age 22 Kelly had an off-set romance with both Cooper and
director Fred Zinnemann.

In 1952 she auditioned for the studio production of Mogambo
and won the role along with a 7 year contract with certain
conditions that she insisted on. The role garnered her a
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and her first
Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

She then went on to star in a TV play The Way of an Eagel
and then was cast in the film version of the broadway hit
"Dial M For Murder"--another Alfred Hitchcock directed
film. She then stared in various other films while she was
gaining more and more recognition. She appeared in another
Hitchcock film called "Rear Window" along side James
Steward. Some would argue that this was Hitchcock's best
film.

Next came Country Girl, which was shot in black and white.
The following March, Kelly would be honored with the Academy
Award for Best Actress.

Though her film career lasted just five years and eleven
films, [not all are mentioned here]Kelly is remembered as a
premier actress in American film.

In April 1955, Grace Kelly was asked to head the U.S.
delegation 'at the Cannes Film Festival. While there, she
was invited to participate in a photo session at the Palace
of Monaco with Prince Rainier III, the ruling sovereign of
the principality. They would end up marrying each other on
April 19, 1956 and the press would label it "the Wedding
Of The Century" How many women could ever state that they
had a real life fairy tale type princess wedding!

The whole ironic thing about Grace Kelly was that she had a
real life fear of driving and her inability to properly
function an automobile, would one day call her to her
death, on a long spiraling strip of road on September 14th,
1982, at the age of 52.

She was voted 13th on the American Film Institutes's list
of the greatest actresses of the classic era, and two of
those 11 films -- High Noon and Rear Window -- are
considered by AFI voters to be among the 50 best films ever
made. She won a Best Actress Oscar for a third film, The
Country Girl, and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress
for Mogambo. A fair number of film fans believe that she was
the most beautiful actress ever to appear on film.