Princess Grace of Monaco–American actress Grace Kelly–dies tragically when her car plunges off a mountain road by the Cote D’Azur in September 1982. She was 52 years old.

Kelly, the daughter of a former model and a wealthy industrialist, began acting as a child. After high school, she attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts in New York. While she auditioned for Broadway plays, she supported herself by modeling and appearing in TV commercials.

In 1949, she debuted on Broadway in The Father by August Strindberg. Two years later, she landed her first Hollywood bit part, in Fourteen Hours. Her big break came in 1952, when she starred as Gary Cooper’s wife in High Noon. Her performance in The Country Girl, as the long-suffering wife of an alcoholic songwriter played by Bing Crosby, won her an Oscar in 1954. The same year, she played opposite Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

While filming another Hitchcock movie, To Catch a Thief (1955), in the French Riviera, she met Prince Rainier of Monaco. It wasn’t love at first sight for Kelly, but the smitten prince initiated a correspondence, which led to their spectacular wedding in 1956. Princess Grace retired from acting after her marriage, although she occasionally narrated documentaries. She had three children.