Leslie Caron

Caron started as a ballerina in Paris before her film debut in the musical An American in Paris (1951). The orphan role in Lili (1953) brought her a BAFTA and her first Academy Award nomination. Through the fifties she headlined musicals — The Glass Slipper, Daddy Long Legs, Gigi — but it was The L-Shaped Room (1962), playing a single pregnant woman, that won her the Golden Globe for Best Actress and a second Oscar nod. She kept working across five decades, from Is Paris Burning? to Chocolat, and in 2007 won an Emmy for a guest turn on Law & Order: SVU as a rape victim. The dancer who could br…