Grace Kelly, Born November 12, 1929, Made Three Hitchcock Films and Left Hollywood at the Top

Photo: AP, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Grace Kelly was born in Philadelphia on November 12, 1929. She made her film debut in the early 1950s, and in a short period she became one of the most admired actresses in Hollywood. In under five years she made around a dozen films.

Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Three of them were for Alfred Hitchcock: Dial M for Murder and Rear Window in 1954, and To Catch a Thief in 1955. Hitchcock liked to describe her as a woman with a cool surface and something more under it, and the films play on that. Rear Window, with James Stewart, is the one I rewatch most often.

Photo: CBS Television, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Country Girl, in which she deliberately played against her glamorous image. In 1956 she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco and retired from acting. High Society was her final film.

Photo: Aaron Volkening, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

She died on September 14, 1982, after a car accident, aged 52. It is a sad end to a life that otherwise looks like a fairy tale from the outside.

Photo: Harry Warnecke of New York Daily News, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Which is your favourite Grace Kelly film? And is it a loss that she stopped when she did, or did she make the right choice?