She thought she was marrying into a fairytale, but that wasn't the case as it turned out.
Grace Kelly was Alfred Hitchcock's muse as she starred in some of his iconic movies like Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock, on the other hand, was her mentor. She was America's sweetheart and rose to fame with her role in the movie High Noon. She also earned an Academy Award for her exceptional performance in The Country Girl. However, she left all of this behind when she met the man of her dreams, according to Biography.
By the age of 26, the actress had had a string of bad relationships with co-stars including a passionate relationship with her Dial M for Murder co-star Ray Milland and Clark Gable, who was 28 years her senior. But by 1956 when she met young Prince Rainier III, she thought the curse of her incomplete love stories might come to an end, reported Independent.
"I had been through several unhappy romances," she once said. "Although I had become a star, I was feeling lost and confused. I didn't want to drift into my 30s without knowing where I was going in my personal life," she added.
She met the Prince through a film editor from Paris Match magazine. Kelly was working on the film To Catch A Thief when the journalist insisted on her doing a photo-op with Prince Rainier. Though she wasn't head over heels for the Prince right away, the letter she received from him after their meeting did the magic.
Kelly's sister, Lizanne Kelly DeVine, remembers the two "walking in the woods, driving through the mountains, and talking about life and values - they fell in love," when Prince Rainier went to visit her Philadelphia home and before the trip ended, the two were engaged. Dubbing the proposal "perfect," Kelly added, "When I was with him, I was happy wherever we were, and I was happy with whatever we were doing."
The fairytale wedding of Kelly and Prince Rainier was the event of the decade with MGM broadcasting it in cinemas around the world. According to the actress's friend Judith Balaban Quine, Kelly was overjoyed. "He was her prince on a white charger and he was going to rescue her from all this. He could not possibly have known that what he was taking her from was what made her the very person he loved. She did not know it either," she said.
Even though the actress had everything she ever wanted, whether a happy marriage was one of them is highly doubtful. Right after tying the knot, Kelly left acting and Prince Rainier banned all her movies in Monaco. According to the reports by The List, Kelly stopped acting because of her husband.
Author J. Randy Taraborrelli of Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairy Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier revealed in his book that Kelly had told reporter Maurice Zolotow that acting was her love and she would never retire. "I'm reading a dozen different scripts, trying to choose among them," the soon-to-be princess said and added, "I'm never going to stop acting."
The Los Angeles Times reported the Prince making the announcement of his wife taking a step back from acting, a few days later. Dubbing his decision as a mutual one, he said, "I don't want my wife to work," and added that they were "happy with our decision."
In the book, My Days With Princess Grace of Monaco, Kelly's closest friend Joan Dale wrote, "I am sure there were times in the early years when she felt somewhat like a prisoner in a gilded cage behind the palace walls." Celebrity biographer Wendy Leigh claimed that the Prince not only controlled Kelly's life but was unfaithful as well.
Claiming Prince Rainier had at least three mistresses within a month of the couple's marriage, Leigh wrote in the book True Grace, "Grace was humiliated and she was extremely unhappy. She was surrounded by decadence and Rainier's disreputable friends." Even after all the claims, Kelly and Prince Rainier remained married until her tragic death in 1982. She was just 52 years old at the time.
According to available details, she was driving her then 17-year-old daughter Stephaine to Paris where she was supposed to start school. Taking a sharp left turn on a steep mountain road led to their car tumbling down a 120ft slope. While her daughter suffered minor injuries, Kelly endured a brain hemorrhage. Her death has been shrouded in mystery to this day.
References:
https://www.biography.com/actor/grace-kelly
https://www.thelist.com/189445/the-untold-truth-of-grace-kelly/
