The youngest of the nine children of an alcoholic house painter, he quit school at 11 to earn a living as an apprentice engraver and factory worker. He broke into show business as an acrobat, but an accident forced him to switch to singing in Paris cafés and variety halls. He overcame the handicap of a limited voice by enriching his act with comedy and zestful charm and before long became established as a popular entertainer. His big break came in 1909, at 21, when he was hired by the Folies-Bergère as the revue partner of the legendary musical star Mistinguett, who became his lover off as well as on stage. A year earlier, in 1908, Chevalier had made the first of several appearances in silent French films, but the musical stage remained his principal medium. Wounded and captured during the first year of WWI, he spent more than two years in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he learned English from a fellow inmate. He was decorated with a Croix de Guerre. Returning to the stage, he became a top-billed star of the music halls and soon became world famous, in his trademark boulevardier outfit of a straw hat and bow tie, for his joie de vivre, suggestive swagger, and twinkling, roguish blue eyes. In 1929 he went to Hollywood and enjoyed great popularity with American audiences as the gay, sophisticated star of such romantic screen classics as Ernst Lubitsch's THE LOVE PARADE (1929) and THE MERRY WIDOW (1934). He left Hollywood in anger in 1935 when Irving Thalberg insisted Chevalier get second billing to Grace Moore in a film, but continued his screen appearances in France and England. In 1938 he was decorated a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Toward the end of WW II he was accused of collaborating with the Nazis but was later vindicated and, more popular than ever, returned to entertaining. In 1947 he brought his one-man show to New York but was refused re-entry in 1951 for having signed the Communist-inspired "Stockholm Appeal" for banning nuclear weapons. He returned to the US and to Hollywood films, however, in the late 50s. In 1958 he won a special Oscar. Next to De Gaulle, Chevalier was probably the best-known Frenchman abroad, one of the great entertainers of the era, a legend in his own time.  Nominated for Actor 1929-30: THE BIG POND and THE LOVE PARADE  Honarary Award 1958: "For his contributions to the world of entertainment for more than half a century." 1 nomination, 1 Honorary Award