Grace Kelly went from Hollywood royalty to the princess of Monaco when she married Prince Rainier. Meet the couple and their descendants.

• Grace Kelly is one of the most famous actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age.

• But her best-known role came after she married Prince Rainier: Princess of Monaco.

• They had three children: Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stéphanie.

Grace Kelly is one of the most notable actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age, but soon after winning an Academy Award for best actress for her role in 1954's "The Country Girl," she left it all behind to marry Monaco's Prince Rainier III.

Kelly had initially planned to continue with her career after the wedding, but Rainier later said he and his wife had decided she would stop acting, according to J. Randy Taraborrelli's book, "Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairy Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier." Although, as The List reported, "It was widely believed that it was Prince Rainier who made his wife stop acting, as Kelly had no plans of retiring at the time of their engagement."

Instead, she turned her attention to Monaco and philanthropic work, such as supporting the country's arts programs and founding a non-profit, AMADE, that supports the well-being of children.

She also had three children with Rainier: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie.

Keep reading to learn more about the couple, their children, and their grandchildren.

Actress Olivia de Havilland introduced Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.

While at the festival, the "Gone With the Wind" star and her husband were "struck" by the idea that Kelly should meet Prince Rainier, de Havilland told People magazine in a 2017 interview.

"I'm tempted to think it was destiny," she said.

Kelly requested that the meeting first be approved by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which was sponsoring the visit, de Havilland said, Town & Country reported. MGM agreed to have a journalist do a story with her in the company of the prince.

On the day she was scheduled to meet him, there were power outages due to a labor strike in the area, and Kelly had no way to dry her hair or iron her clothes, People reported. Instead, she pulled back her hair, ran down the stairs, and got into a waiting car — but it was delayed when it got into a fender-bender with another car filled with photographers.

However, the prince was also late, and when he finally arrived, the two had their interview. De Havilland would later tell People magazine that Kelly was in a "state of enchantment."

They were engaged seven months later.

The couple's 1956 wedding was attended by 700 guests and watched by 30 million more.

The prince, then 32, and Kelly, 26, married on April 18, 1956, in two separate ceremonies: a civil ceremony and a religious ceremony at the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Monaco.

The wedding was three months before Kelly's final film, "High Society," was released by MGM. Her dress was designed by Helen Rose, Kelly's designer at MGM, who was also an Academy Award winner. According to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the ensemble was gifted to her by the film studio.

Kelly's gown continues to inspire brides: Last year, Naomi Biden said she was inspired by the princess' dress for her own wedding.

Seven hundred guests, including Hollywood stars such as Cary Grant and Ava Gardner, but 30 million more watched via the television broadcast, Vanity Fair reported.

The pair then honeymooned in the Mediterranean for seven weeks on a yacht.

Prince Rainier was heir to the throne through his mother's lineage. He was known for bringing prosperity to Monaco — and stardom with his marriage to Kelly.

When Prince Rainier was born in 1923, he was the first heir born in Monaco since 1758, according to his obituary in The Daily Telegraph. He was heir to the throne through his mother, while his father, a count, was half-Mexican and half-French. He was educated in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and France.

In 1944, his mother renounced her right to the throne and Rainier became the direct heir and, upon the death of his grandfather in 1949, 25-year-old Prince Rainier ascended the throne.

Before marrying Kelly, the prince was in a longtime relationship with a French actress named Gisele Pascal, but the relationship ended when a medical report said she was infertile, The New York Times reported — however, she later had a daughter.

After his wedding, "Monaco enjoyed great prosperity during the reign of Rainier and Princess Grace," The New York Times wrote upon his death in 2005.

The couple's "storybook marriage ... helped promote the transformation of his tiny fief from a pastel postage-stamp fantasy on the Mediterranean into a steel-and-glass tax haven," the Times wrote.

The couple had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie.

Grace Kelly died in 1982 after suffering a stroke and crashing her car. She was 52.

Prince Rainier never remarried. He died 23 years later, in 2005, at age 81.

After their first child, Princess Caroline, was born on January 23, 1957, she was considered the world's most photographed baby, People reported.

People reported that Caroline was the focus of intense media coverage throughout her childhood.

She studied ballet, piano, and flute as a child, attended school in England and the Sorbonne in Paris, and she is fluent in French, English, Spanish, German, and Italian, according to her palace profile.

Princess Caroline shared details about her childhood while speaking to the authors of a 2018 book about her brother.

"When we were little, we were probably closer to our nanny than to our parents," she told Isabelle Rivère and Peter Mikelbank, authors of "Albert II of Monaco, The Man and The Prince," People reported.

Today, Princess Caroline continues her mother's philanthropic work, serving as president of the Princess Grace Foundation. She has been married three times and has four children.

Tatler reported that Princess Caroline's first husband was French venture capitalist Phillippe Junot. He was 17 years her senior when the two were married in Monaco in June 1978. They had no children and divorced in October 1980, after which they were granted an annulment by the Catholic Church in 1992.

According to her palace profile, Princess Caroline married speedboat racer Stefano Casiraghi in 1983. They had three children: Andrea Albert Pierre Casiraghi, born in Monaco in 1984; Charlotte Marie Pomeline Casiraghi, born in 1986; and Pierre Rainier Stefano Casiraghi, born in 1987.

According to her palace profile, Caroline's second husband Stefano Casiraghi was killed in a boating accident in 1990, when he was just 30. After his death, Caroline and her children moved to France so she could raise them with more privacy.

The princess' third marriage was to the Duke of Brunswick, Prince Ernst August of Hanover, in 1999, according to her palace profile. He brought two previous children into the marriage. The two also had one daughter together, Princess Alexandra of Hanover, who was born in 1999.

Her four children often attend events together in Monaco. The siblings and some of their partners were pictured together in March.

Her oldest son, Andrea (pictured second left), and his wife, Tatiana Casiraghi (third left), who is the granddaughter of a brewing tycoon, have two children.

Her daughter Charlotte (pictured left) graduated with a license in philosophy from Paris-Sorbonne. Since then, she has worked as a journalist and a model. She and her husband, Dimitri Rassam, have two children.

Pierre (second from right) frequently competes in sailboat racing, while Princess Alexandra of Hanover (center) competed as a figure skater for Monaco at the European Youth Olympics, Tatler reported.

Grace and Rainier welcomed a son, Prince Albert, in 1958.

Prince Albert II of Monaco is the couple's second child and only son. He was born in the Prince's palace in the country on March 14, 1958.

He was educated in Monaco and attended Amherst College in Massachusetts for university, where he received a political-science degree, the Amherst Student reported. Albert later served in the French Navy and attended the Olympics as part of Monaco's bobsledding team.

Albert ascended the throne after his father's death in 2005.

Albert II met his future wife, Charlene, at a swimming event in Monaco.

After the death of his mother, he became involved in the Red Cross and went on to be a five-time Olympian on the country's bobsled team, according to his palace profile.

Tatler reported that the prince met his future wife, Charlene Wittstock, in 2000. Wittstock, who grew up in Zimbabwe and South Africa, was a professional swimmer who had competed at the 2000 Olympics, where she represented South Africa. The pair apparently didn't cross paths at the Olympics, however, and instead met at the Mare Nostrum swimming competition in Monaco, Tatler reported.

In the early years of their relationship, Albert faced two paternity suits from two different women. He later acknowledged that he had indeed fathered the two children, a daughter named Jazmin Grace Grimaldi and a son named Alexandre Grimaldi-Coste.

Insider reported that Albert and Charlene's three-day wedding in 2011 cost an estimated $70 million, with celebrity guests like Karl Lagerfeld and Naomi Campbell in attendance.

In addition to his two older children, Prince Albert and Princess Charlene have twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, who are first and second in line to the throne.

Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella were born on December 10, 2014.

Jacques, who is next in line to the throne, is actually a few minutes younger than his twin sister Gabriella.

However, under the constitution of Monaco, the throne passes down with preference to male heirs. It is only if a female heir has no eligible brothers or brothers with surviving male descendants that she will take the throne.

Princess Stéphanie is Princess Grace and Prince Rainier's youngest child. She was born in 1965.

She went to school in Monaco and France and was known as the family's "wild child," Vogue France reported, citing that her mother called her an "enfant terrible."

Princess Stéphanie was 17 years old when she was a passenger in the car crash that killed her mother. She survived the crash with a fractured vertebra in her neck.

In response to her "wild child" label, which has persisted, she said the crash led her to enjoy life to its fullest.

"Not only did I go through the horrible trauma of losing my mother at a very young age, but I was beside her at the moment of the accident," she said in 2002, Hello! magazine reported.

"I realised how lucky I was to have life," she said. "I had my arms open to the future and I said to myself, 'This could be all over tomorrow.' Nobody has really tried to understand me or my behaviour, which just reflected my decision to enjoy life to the full."

Princess Stéphanie has worked as a designer, model, singer, and activist.

She has worked as an apprentice at Dior and has also created her own designs. She also worked as a model — including multiple covers for Elle France — and a pop singer. As an activist, she served as president of Fight AIDS Monaco, according to UN AIDS.

The princess formed a relationship with her bodyguard Daniel Ducruet in 1992. They married in 1995 and divorced a year later, the Chicago Tribune reported. They had two children, Louis Ducruet, born in 1992, and Pauline Ducruet, born in 1994. Despite being born out of wedlock, they are both included in the line of succession.

In 1998, Stéphanie had her third child, Camille Gottlieb. Vogue reported that Camille did not have her father's name on her birth certificate, though he was later revealed to be Stéphanie's head of security, Jean Raymond Gottlieb. Since her parents never married, Camille is not included in the line of succession.

Insider reported that in 2001, Stéphanie and her children moved into a circus caravan as she began a relationship with an elephant trainer and in 2002, moved back to Monaco. For a year, Stéphanie was married to Portuguese acrobat Adans Lopez Perez.

Princess Stéphanie's children Louis and Pauline attended university in the United States, while Camille attended university in France.

Louis attended Western Carolina State University in North Carolina and Pauline attended Parsons School of Design in New York.

In November 2022, People reported that Louis and his wife, Marie, were expecting their first child.

According to an interview with Hello! Monaco, Stéphanie's youngest daughter, Camille Gottlieb, founded a charity called Be Safe Monaco, which is focused on road safety.

Read the original article on Insider