With classic patrician features and an independent, non-conformist personality, Capucine began her film debut in 1949 at the age of 16 with an appearance in the film Rendezvous in July. She attended school in France and received a BA degree in foreign languages. Married for seven months in her late teens, she never remarried. In 1957, she was discovered by director Charles K. Feldman while working as a high fashion model for Givenchy in Paris, and brought to Hollywood to study acting under Gregory Ratoff. She was put under contract by Columbia studios in 1958, and had her first leading part in the movie, Song Without End. She made 6 more major movies in the early to middle 1960s, two of which (The Lion and The 7th Dawn) starred William Holden, with whom she had a two year affair. Moving from Hollywood to a penthouse apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1962, she continued making movies, mostly in Europe, until her suicide in 1990.



According to rumor, she was remembered in the wills of William Holden (to the tune of $50,000) and Peter Sellers as well as that of 20th Century-Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck. When she committed suicide in March 1990 at the age of 62, her obituary in the New York Times stated that her only known survivors were her three cats. Born Germain Lefebvre, she took the stage name "Capucine" during her modeling days. The name--pronounced "Kap-oo-seen"--is French for the Nasturtium flower. Had a two-year relationship with actor William Holden, who was married at the time. Considered one of the great beauties of Europe. At 21 she met her spouse on the set of the 1949 film Rendez-vous de juillet (1949) (her first screen appearance) and married him the following year. The marriage lasted six months. Was riding in a carriage in Paris when a commercial photographer noticed her. She soon became a top fashion model for Maggy Rouff, Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy. In 1952 she got a two-week job modeling clothes in fashion shows aboard a French cruise ship. She shared a cabin with a 17-year-old dancer working in the chorus of the ship's "nightclub"--Brigitte Bardot.