Movie star Caron dishes the dirt on her 'artificial' world

No reputation is spared as the former starlet tells all about her lovers, her boozing and her marriages

(getty images)

Torrid love affairs, turbulent marriages and hedonistic revelry with the Rat Pack's inner circle.... No reputation is spared as Leslie Caron, the French starlet-turned-stalwart of the silver screen, reveals all in a bruising autobiography.

Warren Beatty, for one, may quake in his director's chair at what his former lover has to say about their two-year affair. British theatre director Sir Peter Hall, Caron's second husband, with whom she had two children, may be less than pleased at reading the intimate details of the tryst, which led to Beatty being named as correspondent in the couple's divorce papers.

Caron will talk about her book, which chronicles her battles with alcoholism and depression, and her struggle to come to terms with her mother's suicide, at the four-day Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, from 16 to 20 September. At 78, she doesn't hold back when talking about her first marriage to meat-packing heir George Hormel II. Nor does she go easy on Michael Laughlin, producer of cult classic Two-Lane Blacktop, whom she married in 1969.

Her book, Thank Heaven, which comes out on 21 September charts Caron's rise to fame after she was spotted by Gene Kelly in Paris at the age of 17. She starred in the musicals Gigi, Lili and An American in Paris, before appearing in a British drama, The L-shaped Room, Ken Russell's Valentino and, more recently, Chocolat, with her countrywoman Juliette Binoche.

At school with Brigitte Bardot, she went on to work with Fred Astaire, Cary Grant and Orson Welles, and made friends with film greats such as Judy Garland, Mae West, Howard Hughes and Elizabeth Taylor.

Most surprising of all, however, is the revelation that she "didn't enjoy" the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.

"Maybe that's what saved me," she says. "I didn't get stuck in it. The weird thing was I could never remember the names of executives or which studio I was working for. There was a sort of block there – perhaps to save myself. The scope of it, the artificiality of it, was something I shied away from."

The Oxfordshire town of Woodstock will welcome speakers including David Cameron, Simon Carr, Alex James and Tony Parsons. Mariella Frostrup will chair the Independent Live debate "Does Reality TV Debase Modern Culture?", with columnists Janet Street-Porter, Johann Hari and Dom Joly.

The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival 2009 takes place from Wednesday 16 to Sunday 20 September