Liliane Montevecchi, French cabaret star who won a Tony for ‘Nine,’ dies at 85

Liliane Montevecchi, a glittering, seemingly eternal French gamin who became a cabaret star in Paris, a pal of Marlon Brando’s in Hollywood and the Tony Award-winning “muse” of director Tommy Tune on Broadway, died June 29 at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.

The cause was colon cancer, said her manager, Kathy Olsen. Montevecchi had been ailing for about two years, she said, and during her time in the hospital had taken to wearing high heels with her medical bootees.

“If any entertainer could be described as ‘Paris incarnate,’ it might be Liliane Montevecchi,” the New York Times culture critic Stephen Holden wrote in 2016.

In a six-decade career, Montevecchi became a welldressed symbol of Gallic sophistication and cheeky charm, known for her monochromatic outfits (she preferred red), effortless dance moves (in her late 60s, she boasted she could “do the splits without even having to warm up”), preference for wine over water and fondness for couture hats, which she said she wore to cover her thin hair.

“If the wind blows,” she once joked, “I look like a rat instead of an elegant woman.”

Along with Leslie Caron and her onetime rival, Zizi Jeanmaire, Montevecchi was part of a generation of performers who leveraged ballet success in France into wider popularity. She won the 1982 Tony for best featured actress in a musical for her portrayal of a movie producer in “Nine,” and eight years later was nominated for “Grand Hotel,” in which she played an acclaimed ballerina nearing retirement.