Grace Kelly was an American actress of films and television, known as a leading lady of stately beauty and reserve. She starred in eleven motion pictures before abandoning a Hollywood career to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956. She was born into a rich Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia (her uncle was the playwright George Kelly) and attended private schools before enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York City in 1947. She made her professional debut in summer stock in July 1949 and her Broadway debut in November 1949. She also appeared frequently on television. During her six-year (1951-56) heyday in Hollywood, she appeared in such films as Fourteen Hours (1951), in which she made her screen debut; High Noon (1952), as Gary Cooper's Quaker wife; Mogambo (1953); and The Country Girl (1954), for which she won an Academy Award for best actress as Bing Crosby's dowdy wife. But perhaps her most memorable roles were in such Alfred Hitchcock films as Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). Kelly was the perfect Hitchcock heroine and had what he described as "sexual elegance." After making The Swan (1956) and High Society (1956), she married Prince Rainier and became princess of Monaco. The couple had three children--Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stephanie--and remained devoted to each other and their family. Princess Grace died of injuries sustained in an automobile accident. She and her daughter Stephanie were driving on a winding road at Cap-d'Ail in the Côte d'Azur region of France when Princess Grace suffered a stroke and lost control of the car, which plunged down a 45-foot (13.7-metre) embankment.

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