Tony Winner Liliane Montevecchi Dies at 85

According to close friends of the performer, Tony-winning stage and screen star Liliane Montevecchi has died at the age of 85.

Born in Paris in 1932, Montevecchi began her career in ballet, becoming a prima ballerina in Roland Petit's Ballets de Paris. Later in her career, after spending much of her 1950s in film and television — sharing the screen with such actors as Fred Astaire, Leslie Caron, Jerry Lewis, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando — she became a star of the Follies Bergère, touring with the company for 10 years.

She reached a professional show business peak as Liliane La Fleur in Nine, for which she won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1982. Eight years later, she would be Tony-nominated for her performance as Elizaveta Grushinskaya in Grand Hotel.

Here she is performing the "Bonjour Amour" number from Grand Hotel at Feinstein's/54 Below in 2015 during a pair of concerts reuniting the Broadway show's original cast members: