Grace Kelly became the Princess of Monaco, but was married life truly that luxurious? Here's why Grace Kelly's marriage was more complicated than you thought.
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00:00Grace Kelly became the Princess of Monaco when she married Prince Renier III, but was
00:04married life truly more luxurious than her former life in Hollywood? Here's why Grace
00:09Kelly's marriage was more complicated than you thought.
00:12In 1955, Grace Kelly was on a trip to the Cannes Film Festival in France when she agreed
00:16to be a part of a magazine cover with Prince Renier III. Per Biography, she rerouted to
00:21the Prince's Palace of Monaco for the shoot, only to jet back to Cannes afterward. As her
00:25friend Gone with the Wind star Olivia de Havilland recalled to People, she was in a state of
00:29enchantment. Enchanted she may have been, but the blonde beauty was already engaged
00:33to fashion designer Oleg Cassini. When Kelly called off her wedding to Cassini, he reportedly
00:38bluntly said of Prince Renier,
00:40One of the reasons I believe you're marrying this man is because this is the best script
00:43that you ever received in your life."
00:46And while Grace did indeed get the role of her lifetime, her complicated marriage would
00:49eventually take center stage. In fact, according to the book Once Upon a Time, Behind the Fairy
00:54Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Renier, the actor hinted that maybe it wasn't her
00:58choice who she ended up marrying, as she reportedly told a friend,
01:01Do you realize if my mother hadn't been so difficult about Oleg Cassini, I probably would
01:05have married him? That one decision changed my entire future.
01:09While the union between Grace Kelly and Prince Renier III wasn't officially an arranged marriage,
01:14many have alleged otherwise. As the author of the book Once Upon a Time wrote, Grace
01:18once alluded that her parents pushed her to marry Prince Renier. But what exactly did
01:22a royal have to gain from it?
01:24According to Grace Kelly, The Secret Life of a Princess, at the time, Monaco had an
01:27independence agreement with neighboring France, which ruled that the sovereign city-state
01:31would revert to French control if the Grimaldi royal family failed to produce an heir. Although
01:36Prince Renier was in a relationship with a French actor before meeting Grace, the woman
01:40wasn't able to have children. As a result, the rear-window actor was subject to a physical
01:44examination to make sure the same issue didn't happen to the Grimaldis again.
01:48After the exam and a shocking $2 million dowry, Prince Renier and Grace courted for a mere
01:53two weeks, and then he popped the question. While the marriage may have been political,
01:57it was allegedly economical, too. As film producer Robert Evans claimed in his autobiography
02:02The Fat Lady Sang, it was actually Aristotle Onassis who came up with the idea. For Evans,
02:07Onassis told Renier,
02:08"...the right bride could do for Monaco's tourism what the coronation of Queen Elizabeth
02:11did for Great Britain."
02:14Like any royal wedding, the 1956 union between Prince Renier III and Grace Kelly was a highly
02:19publicized affair. As Vanity Fair details, there were almost 2,000 reporters present
02:23during the ceremony. Plus, MGM filmed the wedding and broadcast it live to over 30 million
02:28European viewers. While there's no doubt a royal getting married is an exciting moment,
02:32it's the historical timing of it that makes it so iconic. As their son, Prince Albert,
02:37told People years later,
02:38"...it was such an incredible affair, and it's left such a mark on people. But what
02:42it's meant for Monaco, for people around the world, and how their story continues to fascinate
02:46people, that's something unimaginable."
02:48While many dubbed the fairy tale the wedding of the century, Grace reportedly quipped that
02:51it was the Carnival of the Century, per Vanity Fair. Prince Albert indeed confirmed his mother's
02:56anxiousness around the entire event, telling People,
02:59"...Mom said it was overwhelming. It was so exhausting. When they left on their honeymoon
03:03and got on the boat, they both just kind of passed out from exhaustion and had a good
03:06night's sleep before they got on with enjoying their honeymoon the next day."
03:10Of course, being one of the most in-demand actors in the mid-1950s meant Grace Kelly
03:14had a thriving social life. 1954 was a big year for the star, as she received her first
03:18Academy Award nomination and even won her first Golden Globe. At that point, she signed
03:23a seven-year contract with MGM and also began working with the legendary Alfred Hitchcock,
03:27who became her, quote, "...friend and mentor." And in 1955, she won an Academy Award for
03:32her role in Country Girl.
03:33"...When I was acting, my private life was very much my own."
03:38However, Grace Kelly's marriage in 1956 to Prince Renier III effectively wiped her Tinseltown
03:43dreams away. According to Once Upon a Time, behind the fairy tale of Princess Grace and
03:47Prince Renier, Princess Grace would invite her A-list pals to visit her in Monaco and
03:51spend time at the palace. However, Renier would apparently cringe, especially when friends
03:56would call his wife Gracie instead of using her princess title. The tension between the
04:00couple was portrayed in the 2014 movie Grace of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman.
04:04Sadly, Kelly didn't realize that marrying Prince Renier would mean throwing her acting
04:08dreams aside. Grace told the Los Angeles Times in 1964,
04:12"...I miss acting. Once you're bitten with the acting bug, you never really get over
04:16it."
04:17"...I don't feel as though I achieved enough in my career to stand out more than many other
04:23people."
04:24Unfortunately for Grace, Renier disapproved of the actor resuming her silver screen career.
04:29He reportedly once declared to the press, per Kinfolk,
04:31"...I don't want my wife to work."
04:33This sentiment would continue later on in their lives, too. As biographer James Spada
04:37told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel,
04:39"...I feel that the prince contributed to her unhappiness in later life. He was not an emotionally
04:43giving person. He did not let her live her own life. When she began giving her annual
04:47poetry readings, her way of finding a means of self-expression, he didn't attend them
04:51for several years."
04:53In the mid-'70s, an opportunity came for Grace to get a taste of her old life back. According
04:58to Once Upon a Time, in 1976, the Rear Window Star's old agent, Jake Cantor, contacted her
05:03about a business opportunity with 20th Century Fox to have Grace serve as the first woman
05:07on the board. To Cantor's surprise, Grace accepted. However, the main reason for Princess
05:11Grace's desire to serve as a board member was the opportunity to be involved in show
05:15business again, as meetings were either in Los Angeles or New York. Kinfolk quotes her
05:19as explaining,
05:20"...it gets me away from Monaco at least four times a year."
05:24If you push aside the apparent fact that Prince Renier III and Grace Kelly came from different
05:28backgrounds, thus causing snags in their marriage, their time together was complicated romantically,
05:33In fact, many have suggested that both parties were involved in extramarital affairs. According
05:38to celebrity biographer Wendy Lee, within a mere month of their wedding, Renier had
05:42gotten involved with at least three other women. Lee wrote in her book True Grace,
05:46"...Grace was humiliated and she was extremely unhappy."
05:49Interestingly enough, it's reported that Princess Grace didn't take her husband's salacious
05:53romps quietly. She once reportedly revealed to her hairstylist, according to The Express,
05:58"...I know my husband has affairs with other women. That's very frustrating to me and makes
06:01me very unhappy."
06:03As a result, the former actor reportedly reignited some of her old flames, such as with Marlon
06:07Brando and Frank Sinatra.
06:09"...Not everybody's lucky enough to marry a prince."
06:12Grace Kelly and Prince Renier III had three children, Prince Albert, Princess Caroline,
06:17and Princess Stephanie. However, their familial relations weren't exactly flourishing. Caroline
06:22revealed in Albert II of Monaco, The Man and the Prince,
06:25"...For my brother and I, Nanny Maureen was the key figure in our life. When we were little,
06:29we were probably closer to our nanny than to our parents."
06:32That being said, it's not like the Grimaldi children didn't have any strong ties to their
06:35parents. Albert was apparently much closer to his mother than his father. Albert told
06:40People,
06:41"...Coming to live here and having to behave in a certain way must have been hard for her
06:44at first."
06:45"...My children give me a great deal of happiness."
06:49As for Prince Renier, it seems that as his children grew up, he finally wished he'd treated
06:52them with more paternal fondness, with the Chicago Tribune quoting him as musing,
06:57"...My only regret is to have not been available enough to take care of my children during
07:00their tender years, and it is too late to make up for lost time."
07:04After silver screen legend Grace Kelly became Princess Grace of Monaco, many believe that
07:08she became incredibly depressed living in the microstate. In fact, the book High Society,
07:13The Life of Grace Kelly reveals that the actor even once boldly told a reporter,
07:17"...I don't expect to be happy, and I don't look for happiness."
07:20While the biography suggested that Grace wasn't suffering from depression all the time, she
07:24still had periods of sadness and loneliness. Grace herself alluded to the difficulties
07:29of suddenly moving across the pond, as she said in a 2020 interview in 1982,
07:33"...Mediterranean countries don't accept change very easily."
07:37Many have compared Princess Grace's experience marrying into royalty as that of the late
07:41Princess Diana's. And interestingly enough, the two crossed paths, too. As Lady Diana
07:45once revealed in Diana, Her True Story and Her Own Words,
07:49"...I remember meeting Princess Grace and how wonderful and serene she was,
07:52but there was troubled water under her. I saw that."
07:56Much like the incredible amount of paparazzi that has plagued the British royal family,
07:59Prince Renier III and Grace Kelly never really had any privacy. As the author of Grace Kelly,
08:04Hollywood Dreamgirl, revealed to Closer Weekly,
08:07"...the one thing that she would talk about was time. She would say that she wanted privacy a
08:11little bit."
08:12The former Hollywood icon allegedly had no idea how rarely she would be able to escape for some
08:16one-on-one time with her husband. Interestingly enough, at the time of Grace and Renier's
08:20wedding in the mid-1950s, Monaco wasn't the glamorous playground for the wealthy that it is
08:25now. Biographer Geoffrey Robinson told Closer Weekly,
08:28"...the electricity and plumbing were 19th-century French, and even the telephones didn't work."
08:33With the sudden shift of lifestyle, along with her personal life suddenly being put
08:36under the microscope, it's no wonder that this royal marriage was as complicated and exhausting
08:41as it was. Unfortunately for Grace and Renier, the paparazzi weren't just after them, but their
08:45children, too. Her daughter, Stephanie, had to go to her gymnastics classes in the trunk of their
08:50car, as Princess Grace revealed in a 1982 2020 interview, just so the paparazzi wouldn't follow
08:55her. After her death in 1982, many people have come forward to discuss Grace Kelly's alleged
09:00difficulties with her husband, Prince Renier III. However, it's also possible that Kelly
09:05embraced her new family and marriage after leaving Hollywood. Princess Grace, mused to
09:092020, the same year of her untimely death,
09:11"...the paparazzi make up things. They make up romances. According to the press,
09:15my husband and I are constantly being divorced, which is also not the case."
09:20As for Renier, while rumors of infidelity plagued the royal,
09:22he may have genuinely held a lot of love for his wife. According to My Days with Princess
09:26Grace of Monaco, Prince Renier never recovered from the loss of Grace and never remarried.
09:31Per The New York Times, Grace Kelly died in Monte Carlo on September 14,
09:351982, suffering a cerebral hemorrhage as a result of a fatal car accident.
09:40It's been suggested that the Grimaldi royal family,
09:43much like a handful of other historical families, are cursed. According to Britannica,
09:47the Grimaldis originally hailed from Genoa, Italy, officially gaining control of Monaco in 1419.
09:52Prince Renier III's great-grandfather, Albert I, gave Monaco a constitution in 1911.
09:58That being said, the menacing lore that has plagued the family persisted even before then.
10:02Per ABC News, the story goes that in the 13th century, Prince Renier kidnapped a witch who
10:07cursed the entire family's bloodline and declared,
10:09"...never will a Grimaldi find true happiness in marriage."
10:12Sure enough, things haven't exactly been easy for the Monaco royal family since then,
10:16and as The Independent so succinctly put it,
10:19"...scandal, divorce, and rumors of infidelity have dogged them for decades.
10:23They have been dubbed Europe's most dysfunctional family."
10:26Rumors of curses aside, it seems that Grace Kelly and Prince Renier III's marriage was
10:30filled with talk of infidelity, and the world is yet to recover from Princess Grace's traumatic
10:34and untimely death.