--- title: Debbie Reynolds Death: How She Rose to Accidental Stardom description: From a chance win at a local beauty pageant to starring opposite Gene Kelly, Reynolds' career was as unexpected as it was successful canonical: https://time.com/3672383/debbie-reynolds-acting-career/ author: Eliza Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-25T17:00:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T19:38:22.000Z og:title: How Debbie Reynolds Rose to Accidental Stardom og:description: The multitalented performer has died at 84 og:url: https://time.com/3672383/debbie-reynolds-acting-career/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb9e9f8c823b6dd5a/69877a848e0601ea1c459c55/150116-debbie-reynolds-01.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Debbie Reynolds, 1950 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Debbie Reynolds Rose to Accidental Stardom twitter:description: The multitalented performer has died at 84 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb9e9f8c823b6dd5a/69877a848e0601ea1c459c55/150116-debbie-reynolds-01.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Debbie Reynolds Stumbled Into Stardom  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Updated: Dec 13, 2023 7:38 PM UTCPublished: Jan 25, 2015 5:00 PM UTC  Debbie Reynolds, 1950 Debbie Reynolds, 1950Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Updated: Dec 13, 2023 7:38 PM UTCPublished: Jan 25, 2015 5:00 PM UTC Mary Frances Reynolds wanted to be a gym teacher. She grew up a ball-playing, tree-climbing tomboy from a church-going family in Burbank, Calif. A chance decision to enter a local beauty contest at age 16 and the surprising victory that ensued led to a contract with Warner Brothers, a name change (to Debbie, although [she said in an early interview that she would have preferred](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1873&dat=19540925&id=r1EgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tcwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4510,4387947) “Patches” or “Saucy”) and a long on-screen career, for which she was [honored](http://time.com/3656341/fisher-award-reynolds/) last year with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Reynolds, who [died](http://time.com/4619272/actress-debbie-reynolds-dies-a-day-after-daughter-carrie-fisher/) Wednesday at 84, just one day after her daughter [Carrie Fisher](http://time.com/4618456/carrie-fisher-dead-remembrance/) died following a heart attack, did not grow up singing, dancing or acting. But once she entered show business she worked tirelessly to develop those talents. Beginning with her brief stint at Warner Bros. as a teenager, she regularly put in 10-hour days honing all three. She appeared in one musical film with the studio (_The Daughter of Rosy O’Grady_ in 1950), then got picked up by MGM after playing Helen Kane ([the “Boop Boop a Doop” girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hclK-UKJNgk)) across from Fred Astaire in _Three Little Words_. But her breakout role would come in 1952, when she played aspiring actress Kathy Selden opposite Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in _Singin’ in the Rain_. That movie catapulted Reynolds, who could barely dance a step when she first met Kelly on set, to stardom. She went on to make movies like _Tammy and the Bachelor_, in 1957, which gave her a No. 1 hit on the Billboard charts, _How the West Was Won_ in 1962 with Gregory Peck and _The Unsinkable Molly Brown_ in 1964, for which she received an Oscar nod. As much as her work kept her in the spotlight, Reynolds also received unwanted attention for a scandal in her personal life, though not of her own making. In a love triangle that provided as much tabloid fodder as the Aniston-Pitt-Jolie drama of the early aughts, Reynolds’ husband Eddie Fisher, Carrie’s father, divorced her in 1959 and immediately married her close friend Elizabeth Taylor. Reynolds has said that she was to Taylor as Aniston was to Jolie: the all-American girl next door spurned by the hypersexualized bombshell. “I stood no chance against her,” she [once said](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/debbie-reynolds-sex%5Fn%5F3390822.html). “What chance did I have against Elizabeth, a woman of great womanly experience, when I had no experience at all?” LIFE Magazine [described her](http://books.google.com/books?id=EVIEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs%5Fge%5Fsummary%5Fr&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false) that year as “Eddie’s scorned woman,” but emphasized that she was “not one to retreat behind dark glasses.” Outwardly, she was, despite her painful personal drama, “full of fun and bouncy as a kitten on a living room rug.” And though she was at that time a decade into her career, the magazine described her with as much innocence as it might have described that boyish teenager: “Debbie is a homespun girl and she loves Coke, chewing gum and popcorn.” The Lifetime Achievement Award she received in 2015 offered overdue recognition for a performer with a closet full of nominations — for an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and two Golden Globes — but no major wins. Reynolds’ career counted dozens of film projects, including voice-over work (most notably, as Charlotte in _Charlotte’s Web_), as well as turns on Broadway and television. She continued to work in the years preceding her death, with her most notable recent role as Liberace’s mother in the 2013 HBO movie _Behind the Candelabra_. It all amounted to quite a collection of stripes on the sleeves of a woman whose entire career began by accident. “I’m very proud to say I was Miss Burbank and had a hole in my bathing suit and my rear end was hanging out and I didn’t have shoes, high-heel shoes,” she said in [an interview](http://www.wnyc.org/story/281718-debbie-reynolds/transcript/) in 2013\. “I’m very grateful for stumbling into show business.” _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the photo editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at_ [_@LizabethRonk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Debbie Reynolds, 1950 Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds, 1950 Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds with Carleton Carpenter on set of the film Two Weeks with Love, 1950. Ed Clark—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds on candid TV series with singer Eddie Fisher, 1954. Allan Grant—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Wedding of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, 1955 Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds and Tony Randell on set of The Mating Game, 1959. Allan Grant—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds at an airport during filming of It Started With a Kiss, 1959. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds on set during filming of It Started With a Kiss, 1959. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds, 1959. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds on set during filming of It Started With a Kiss, 1959. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds during dance rehearsals, 1960. Allan Grant—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds during dance rehearsals, 1960. Allan Grant—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Debbie Reynolds acting as Zsa Zsa Gabor, 1965. John Dominis—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3672383/debbie-reynolds-acting-career/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3672383/debbie-reynolds-acting-career/"},"headline":"How Debbie Reynolds Stumbled Into Stardom","datePublished":"2015-01-25T17:00:07.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T19:38:22.000Z","description":"The multitalented performer, who went from movie-going tomboy to movie star in a few short years, died in the wake of her daughter's death","url":"https://time.com/3672383/debbie-reynolds-acting-career/","keywords":["photography","LIFE Magazine","Icons"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb9e9f8c823b6dd5a/69877a848e0601ea1c459c55/150116-debbie-reynolds-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliza Berman","jobTitle":"Berman is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb9e9f8c823b6dd5a/69877a848e0601ea1c459c55/150116-debbie-reynolds-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Debbie Reynolds, 1950","caption":"Debbie Reynolds, 1950","creditText":"Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3672383/debbie-reynolds-acting-career/","name":"How Debbie Reynolds Stumbled Into Stardom"}}]}] ```