Which actress plays Ariane Chavasse in Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon?

Audrey Hepburn plays Ariane Chavasse in Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon.

Released in 1957, the romantic comedy casts Hepburn as Ariane, a young cello student in Paris whose widowed father, Claude Chavasse, works as a private detective specializing in marital infidelity. After Ariane discovers that an American playboy is in danger from a jealous husband, she intervenes and becomes entangled in the very romantic world she has only observed through her father’s case files.

Hepburn stars opposite Gary Cooper as Frank Flannagan and Maurice Chevalier as Claude. Wilder had wanted Hepburn for Ariane from the outset, while earlier possibilities for Flannagan included Cary Grant and Yul Brynner. The screenplay, written by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, is based on Claude Anet’s 1920 novel Ariane, jeune fille russe.

The film is commonly confused with Hepburn’s other Paris-set romances, especially Sabrina and Charade. Its European release title, Ariane, can also make the character’s name seem like the film’s original title. In the United States, it was released as Love in the Afternoon and later reissued under the title Fascination.