Princess Grace also made an effort to learn the language and customs of her new home, settling into the country where she would live out the remainder of her life. While moviemaker Alfred Hitchcock, for whom she was a muse, tried to woo the actress back to the States (opens in new tab) to make more films, Kelly ultimately remained by her husband’s side in Monaco during the country’s international crisis with France. 'I am sure there were times in the early years when she felt somewhat like a prisoner in a gilded cage behind the palace walls,' said Joan Dale, Kelly’s closest friend, in an excerpt from her book (opens in new tab), My Days With Princess Grace of Monaco. While it’s unclear whether such a conversation between the two actually took place, other real-life friends of Kelly’s hinted at her initial unhappiness in her new life. Everything she says and does seems to be wrong, her new husband is cold and distant, and she misses things back home. The American movie star upended her whole life in the states and gave up her career to become Princess Grace of Monaco, wife to Prince Rainier III, but it doesn't go how she had hoped.
“I don’t know how I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this place where I can’t be me,” Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) whispers to her trusted confidant, Father Francis Tucker (Frank Langella), at the height of her despair.
