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.