French actress and model Germaine Lefebvre, better known as Capuchine, was BOTD in 1928. Born in Saint-Raphaël, she attended school in Saumur and earned a degree in foreign languages. She moved to Paris in her teens where she was spotted by a photographer, becoming a model for Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy. She made her screen debut in Jean Cocteau’s 1948 film L’Aigle à deux têtes and made occasional appearances in French films throughout the 1950s. Spotted by American film producer Charles Feldman in 1957, she signed a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures. Her first English-language role was in the 1960 Liszt biopic Song Without End with Dirk Bogarde, earning her a Golden Globe nomination. She is best known for her role in the 1962 potboiler Walk On the Wild Side, playing a sex worker attempting to hide her past and pursue a respectable (ie heterosexual) relationship, only to be blackmailed by Barbara Stanwyck’s lesbian brothel madam. The film is notable for its relative frankness about lesbianism and Stanwyck’s crackling on-screen chemistry with Capuchine. As with most Hayes Code-era Hollywood films, Capuchine’s character dies as punishment for her sexual transgressions. She had her biggest commercial success playing Peter Sellers’ wife in the 1963 comedy The Pink Panther. She and Sellers repeated on their onscreen pairing in 1965’s What’s New, Pussycat? Her Hollywood career waned in the 1960s and she returned to Europe. In the 1969 film Fraulein Doktor, she played a doctor who pursues and seduces a female spy, featuring a relatively graphic love scene. She also appeared in Federico Fellini’s Satyricon. Fellini later said of her, “She had a face to launch a thousand ships… but she was born too late”. In the 1970s, she played opposite Charles Brosnan in Red Sun, Jean-Paul Belmondo in Incorrigible and Richard Burton in Jackpot. Her remaining career was spent mostly in low-budget genre films and television, though she had a brief comeback in the 1980s with two Pink Panther sequels. She married actor Pierre Trabaud in 1949, separating eight months later. She had a long-term relationship with Feldman until his death in 1968, and a two-year affair with William Holden. Openly bisexual, she is also thought to have had relationships with women. Retiring to Switzerland, she lived a reclusive life with three cats, committing suicide in 1990 aged 62.