Grace of Monaco

by Robinson, Jeffrey

  He maintained it was very much a team effort. “My mom and dad did more for this principality than anyone else in history. They did it together. They gave Monaco a prestige that no one else ever did or probably ever could have. It’s hard for me to put into words but just look around. I guess that’s a good indication of what’s been going on here. It used to be a kind of happy-go-lucky, half-asleep spot on the Mediterranean that only catered to tourism. Now it’s a vibrant, busy little city, much more than just a tourist stop. He and Mom have to take the credit for that.”

  Having mentioned Grace, the conversation naturally turned to her.

  Albert confided that one of his fondest memories of childhood was discovering that his mother had been a major movie star. “I was in my early teens and I remember it was a pretty nice revelation. We used to talk about the movies and she used to tell me stories. I’m still interested in films and filmmaking and I’ve taken a few courses in it. At times I’ve thought about what I’d like to have done if I didn’t have these other responsibilities and doing something in films has come to mind. But it’s such a tough business. Anyway, I was never a great actor. I did a few operettas at summer camp. I never acted at school although I was always tempted. Something always held me back. Maybe I’m too shy. But just trying to understand film is fun. Maybe I would have liked to do something behind the camera.”

  As a matter of fact, he did have a brief film career which started and ended in 1999.

  Billed as Albert Grimaldi, he made his screen debut in One Man’s Hero, which starred Tom Berenger. Albert played an Irish mercenary fighting for Mexico during the Mexican-American war.

  His character’s name was Kelly.

  “Don’t expect an incredible acting performance,” he warned.

  The reason he did the film was because some friends of his were in it, and because they’d asked him to come along and because, well, “just for the fun of it.”

  He announced in Monaco that he was going on vacation and, without saying anything more, flew to Durango, Mexico. There, he lived with the cast and crew for several days on a hot, dusty set. The script called for several characters to be executed at the end of the film, including Albert’s character.

  “Being hanged,” commented director Lance Hool, “would have been a great topper to his acting debut.”

  Instead, Albert was called back to Monaco before the final scene was shot. Rainier was not pleased with his son’s moonlighting. And anyway, his entire performance wound up on the cutting room floor.

  Not that he ever expected to duplicate his mother’s film career. “It wasn’t even supposed to be a speaking part,” he said.

  Still, as a young teenager, it was only when he’d realized who his mother had been and who her Hollywood friends were, that an important revelation began dawning on him.

  “It really amazed me who I was meeting and that I could interact with them,” he said. “I used to think, hey, I may be the only 14-year-old in the world who could pick up the phone and ring Frank Sinatra or Gregory Peck or Cary Grant and actually get them on the phone.”

  Understanding the access he had and how access translates to power, he claimed he was always careful not to use it flippantly. “I’m not sure if I always use it the right way. At least I know enough not to ask for favors because the reaction of those kinds of people to someone asking for a favor is the same reaction I have when someone asks me for a favor.”

  Yet, he insisted, he wasn’t shy about picking up the phone when he had to. And in that respect, he said, he’s different from his father. “Dad hates the phone and prefers writing letters. He’s a tremendous letter writer. But I’m not a great writer so I call people. He’s always after me because he thinks I use the phone too much. As soon as I start dialing he says, ‘Who are you talking to? Why do you have to call them?’ You know what I like best about the telephone? Sometimes I call people I may not know and I tell the secretary, ‘Hi, it’s Prince Albert,’ and they say, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It’s very funny. I’ve learned to let my secretary dial calls. Except I really love it when someone tells me, ‘Yeah, sure you are, come on, who is it?’”

  Unlike some middle children, who believe that is the most difficult place to be, Albert maintained that he never felt stuck between his sisters. “We’ve always been very close, although Caroline as a kid was pretty bossy and pretty independent. I went along with it for a while. Sure she annoyed me a few times when we were kids. Sure we used to fight. All brothers and sisters do. But when I was about 11 or 12, I was taking judo lessons. Once when she was harassing me, I did a hip movement and threw her to the floor. Ever since then we’ve had a good rapport.”

  When asked if she recalled that particular incident, Caroline winced. “I certainly do. We’ve always been a very close family, and I was especially close to Albert because we’re only a year apart. The thing was that he and I used to fight like cats and dogs while we were growing up. I mean we’d fight with the determined intention of causing vast amounts of pain. Well that day, just because he’d been taking judo lessons, he threw me on the floor so hard I knew that was the end of that. There could be no more picking on baby brother.”

  Stephanie escaped that, being so much younger.

  As Caroline pointed out, “There’s eight years difference between us so I guess I always felt responsible for her. I guess I was always playing the older sister with her. I babysat for her and watched out for her.”

  Albert felt just as protective. “I played with Stephanie a lot when we were kids. Probably because I love younger kids and even at that age I was kind of fascinated by this little baby in the family. So we always got along great. We’ve always had a good relationship. I know she went through a lot because of the accident. It affected her more than most people can imagine, maybe even more than we think. She had a very difficult time adjusting afterwards, simply in terms of relating to other people. Hence her chaotic lifestyle.”

  Because Stephanie has always had such a high exposure, because the press followed her and bothered her for years, he understood how everything about her life got blown way out of proportion.

  He continued, “Because of her age and some of the things she’s wanted to do, I think there’s been additional pressure on her and worry that she’d get hurt somewhere along the line. I really feel for her. She never asked for any of that. She just wanted to do her own thing for a while, and she got caught. My dad and I have had long conversations about it and he’s been very worried about her. But that’s only normal. I think she’s learning who to trust. She’s a very sweet girl who puts up a cold, hard front because she’s shy and she doesn’t always know how to deal with certain people. That’s strange in a way because as a family we’ve been in different situations where we’ve had to deal with people. But she’s always kind of resisted that and now it’s working against her. When she does open up to someone maybe she opens up too much. Maybe she’s been too easily influenced by the wrong people.”

  That was a problem, Albert admitted, not at all unique to his little sister. “I’m discovering that the more I get involved with my job the lonelier it is. Sure you have people around you to help, advisers, but it’s really up to you to take the final decisions and I guess the more I move towards a position of power and leadership, the more people I find around me claiming to be my friend. That’s hard to deal with. I tend to trust most people, but I’ve been disappointed a lot.”

  Chapter 23

  Stephanie

  She was the tomboy of the family.

  Just like her older sister, Stephanie started school in Monaco, took piano lessons, and attended dance classes. Just like her older brother, she was encouraged to pursue her interests in sports. And because her mother and her sister both attended a convent school for proper young ladies, it was only natural that Stephanie would also attend such a school.

  She didn’t want to go to Caroline’s alma mater in England, so she was enrolled in a convent school outside Paris, and she absolutely detest
ed it. The sisters were old and grumpy, and the place was decidedly stale. The setting was also pretty grim, totally isolated in the middle of some woods. But neither Rainier nor Grace realized just how awful it was until they saw it. Once they did, it caused a minor row between her parents. Rainier wanted to find Stephanie another school. Stephanie also wanted to find another school. Grace insisted she stay at this one.

  Rainier recalled, “We took her there by car for the first term, but as soon as we got there I knew I didn’t like it. They’d announced a swimming pool but that didn’t exist. They’d announced tennis courts, but there was nothing more than a mud plot with a net strung across it. It was a real disappointment. By the time we drove away and left her standing there, waving goodbye, she was in tears. I said to Grace, ‘We’ve really made a mistake. Let’s turn around and go back.’ But she said no. She was stronger than I was about that. I was absolutely prepared to bring Stephanie home to Paris with us.”

  The very mention of the place made Stephanie wince. “I thoroughly hated it. I only spent one term there, September to December, but it was more than enough. I’d broken my foot so I was in my room a lot. Can you believe they had bars on the windows and two German shepherd dogs that they’d let loose at night to keep the girls from running away? We weren’t allowed to put anything up on the walls or even to have a radio. It was an experience! Frankly, I still don’t understand why I was sent to that place. I wasn’t that bad, to be stuck there like that. Of course, looking back, I guess it was at the time of my sister’s divorce and my parents probably wanted to keep me away from that whole situation. But I left as soon as I could. A week before Christmas break I escaped. I just took my things and got out of there.”

  Rainier sympathized. “The school did have some pretty silly rules. To begin with, the girls had to wear dark blue skirts down to their ankles, with big pleats in them and white shirts with long sleeves. Then, the girls had nothing at all to say in the running of the school, the way Caroline and her friends could voice their opinions at St. Mary’s. In other words, at this place, the girls did what they were told to or were punished for disobedience. Worst still, there was a limit on the number of showers they could take each week.”

  “Two,” Stephanie blurted out, disdainfully. But she quickly discovered that her distaste for desserts could save her from that. “Mom didn’t raise us to eat a lot of sweets. None of us in the family like desserts. Albert might have some sweets sometimes, but when we were growing up, my mom would put fruit or yogurt on the table for dessert. We didn’t get to see a lot of cakes and cream pies. Well, it didn’t take me long to find out that some of the other girls were more interested in my desserts than they were in their own showers. So I negotiated away my desserts and wound up with a shower every day. I’d rather be clean and starving than fat and dirty.”

  At the end of that single term she transferred to the more congenial atmosphere of a well-known boarding school in Paris, not far from the family apartment. “That was so much better because I could go home on Wednesday nights and on weekends. I liked that school. I had my own room and there were no convent rules. I took a shower every day without being hassled and still didn’t eat my desserts.”

  She passed her French baccalaureat exams in 1982 and had planned on further studies, but the car accident that nearly killed her—and did kill her mother—changed the course of her life.

  Everyone grieves their own way. Stephanie’s was, promptly, to drop out of everything.

  Her boyfriend at the time was Paul Belmondo, son of French actor Jean Paul Belmondo. He’d visited her in the hospital, comforted her there and, in time, brought her back to Paris with him. They watched videos together all day long. She stayed there with him, hiding in her shell. Rainier, Caroline, and Albert were justifiably concerned. When she announced that she didn’t want to go on to university, they urged her to change her mind. After a while, she said she was interested enough in fashion that she might do something with that. It took a year before she could bring herself to do anything, but in the autumn of 1983, she enrolled in a fashion course in Paris. At the end of it, an old family friend, Marc Bohan, hired her as one of his design assistants at Christian Dior.

  Before long, the old Stephanie was starting to re-emerge. One day she showed up with her hair dyed punk orange. The powers at Dior sent her home with orders to wash it out immediately. They warned her about returning with orange hair. So she did what she was told, went home, and washed it out, and the next day showed up with her hair dyed punk green.

  “My time at Dior was a great learning experience. I went to work every morning at 9:30, stayed there until I was supposed to leave and had a pay check at the end of every month. It was a real job. I had a little apartment in Paris and lived on my own. I was flattered that my father would trust me to do that. After all, I was barely 18. But I learned so much. I learned everything I know about fashion from Marc Bohan. He was great and I’ll never be able to thank him enough for taking me in.”

  She traded Paul Belmondo for Anthony Delon, son of French actor Alain Delon, left Bohan and made a deliberate move to cash in on her good looks by becoming a model. “Actually, what I wanted to do was create my own bathing suit company. I planned it with a girl I’d met at Dior, but we needed to raise some money. I didn’t want to ask my father for it. I have my own pride. I wanted to do it myself. Well, I knew a girl who worked as a model and she convinced me that I could earn enough modeling to start my company. So I became a model.”

  Five foot eight, thin, boyishly exotic, and with absolutely stunning blue eyes, she had no trouble at all getting work. There’s no doubt she could have made it on looks alone, but being Princess Stephanie didn’t hurt, and she quickly commanded fees of $5,000–$10,000 a day.

  “I made the rounds with my portfolio under my arm,” she recalls, “just like all models have to. And believe me, it’s not a lot of fun. Most models are exploited. I know I was. I worked very hard at it, but most of the time photographers were more interested in their camera than they were in me. They didn’t care how hot it was under the lights or how long the session lasted. If I complained they simply picked up the phone and asked for another brunette.”

  Talk was, at the time, that Rainier was not pleased with Stephanie’s modeling. But she insisted that wasn’t quite the case. “If he was really unhappy about it he would have made me stop right away. The truth is that he let me go through with it.”

  A New York agency decided she was hot, and set up a US tour to launch her as a major new face in the States. They put a lot of money into promoting her, knowing how high the stakes could go if she hit it big. But, at the very last minute, the tour was cancelled. She’d called it off. Talk was, at the time, that Rainier was so upset with Stephanie that he’d simply pulled the plug on her career and forbidden her to go.

  But she said, “That’s not what happened.”

  She gave it up because she’d been working too hard in the months leading up to the tour and very suddenly took ill. “The day before I was to leave for the States, I’d been on a job. It was supposed to be done by six that evening but we didn’t finish until two the next morning. I was so exhausted from working 60-hour weeks and such crazy schedules that when I got home I passed out. A friend found me unconscious on the floor and rushed me to the hospital.”

  Modeling had by this time put enough cash in her bank account to enable her to go into the bathing suit business. She and her partner brought out a line of swimsuits under the name Pool Positions, which they described as “sexy without being vulgar.” They showed their first collection in Monaco, packed the audience with famous faces and immediately sold their wares to major outlets like Bloomingdales, Macy’s, and Harrods.

  It surprised her as much as anyone else that, in her very first year she’d invaded the market the way she did. “I’d like to think that most of our success was based on the bathing suits themselves and not merely on the fact that my name was involved. Sure we did the fashion show in M
onaco because that helped. Why not? But in the end you have to please the buyers. If they can’t sell the bathing suits in their stores it doesn’t matter a damn to them who the designer is. If the bathing suits weren’t good they would have said, ‘This is all very nice but thank you anyway, we’ll wait till next year.’ Instead we had books and books of orders from around the world.”

  However, the partnership wasn’t to be.

  Personalities clashed, and only two years into the venture, the friend she’d started the company with walked out. “I felt betrayed and hurt when she left because I always considered her to be my friend. Friendship for me is so important and so hard to find. I guess maybe it’s that way for everybody. I have one true, true friend in Paris whom I’ve known for 12 years. He’s the kind of person I know I can call any time of the day or the night and if I need him, he’ll be there. I just think it hurts more to be betrayed in friendship than it does in business or even in love.”

  Stephanie might have stuck with it, and made a go of it on her own, but Pool Positions soon took a back seat to music and acting when someone offered her the chance to cut a single. Her song, “Irresistible,” shot to number one in the French charts. Although her voice was thin and there could never be any comparisons made to say, Barbra Streisand or Celine Dion, the record sold an impressive 1.3 million copies in Europe in the first 90 days and went on to pass five million. Her critics were fast to claim that the song didn’t matter, that she’d merely cashed in on her name and big sales were to be expected.

  “I wasn’t expecting it to happen like that,” she said. “I never thought the record would sell the way it did. But given the chance to sing I discovered that’s what I really want to do. Singing and ­acting.”

  GqH

  Parlaying a French pop song into a French acting career might have seemed logical for anyone else, but the downside of her chart success was the increasing awareness that if she was ever going to be known for what she did and not who her parents had been, she couldn’t stay in France.