ACTOR
Capucine
19 archived facts 2 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (19)
- #001
Capucine was a longtime friend of Audrey Hepburn; the two met in Paris in the late 1940s while working as models. Capucine was manic-depressive, and her friend saved her life several times after repeated suicide attempts (both women were living in Switzerland at the time).
- #002
Capucine died after jumping from her eighth-floor apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland.
- #003
In 1952 she took a job modeling clothes in two-week fashion shows aboard a French passenger liner. She shared a cabin with 17-year-old dancer Brigitte Bardot, who was working in the ship's nightclub chorus.
- #004
Born Germain Lefebvre, she took the stage name "Capucine" during her modeling days. Pronounced "Kap-oo-seen," the name is the French word for the nasturtium flower.
- #005
When Capucine committed suicide in March 1990 at the age of 62, her New York Times obituary noted that her only survivors were her three cats.
- #006
Capucine, a longtime friend of Audrey Hepburn, was a witness at Hepburn's 1969 wedding to Dr. Andrea Dotti in Lausanne, Switzerland, where Hepburn lived for many years until her death.
- #007
According to rumor, Capucine was also remembered in the wills of William Holden (around $50,000) and Peter Sellers, as well as that of 20th Century-Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck.
- #008
A commercial photographer spotted Capucine while she was riding in a car in Paris. She soon became the top model for Maggy Rouff, Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy.
- #009
Capucine had a two-year relationship with the actor William Holden, who was married at the time.
- #010
One Wednesday in 1956 Capucine realized she was bored. Since she had never been to America, she flew there on the Friday. She modeled in New York for a time, and one night at the Manhattan restaurant Le Pavilion she met the star John Wayne and the manager/producer Charles K. Feldman. Feldman signed her to a contract (she later moved in with him) and sent her to California to learn English. She made her English-language debut as Princess Carolyne in Song Without End (1960).
- #011
Capucine was considered one of the great beauties of Europe.
- #012
Her French bourgeois family wanted her to become a schoolteacher. When she objected, they suggested she work in a bank.
- #013
Capucine was born in Saumur, France, the same small town on the banks of the Loire as Coco Chanel, one of her famous employers during her modeling days.
- #014
At the age of 21, Capucine met her husband on the set of the 1949 film Rendezvous in July 1949 (her first appearance on screen), and married him the following year. The marriage lasted six months.
- #015
Dirk Bogarde said Capucine was the only woman he ever considered marrying, though he probably said it deliberately.
- #016
Her birth name was Germain.
- #017
Her close friends called her by the nickname "Cap."
- #018
Her last known address was Chemin de Primerose 6, Lausanne, Switzerland.
- #019
Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered.
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