The Corfu Home where Leslie Caron stayed while filming "The Durrells".

The actress and dancer Leslie Caron has a better breakthrough story than most. Hers came while she was a winged, pointy-eared sphinx suspended from a trapeze, enraged and suicidal at Oedipus's inability to solve her riddles, writes Melissa Lawford.

"I attached myself by the ankle and threw myself backward," said Caron. The audience gasped. Her co-star Jean Babilee "used to pull my ponytail to see if I was really dead:". It was the 1948 premiere of David Lichine's experimental ballet La Rencontre and one Gene Kelly was in the audience. He tried and failed to find her backstage, but two years later cast her in an American in Paris.

She went on to star in Gigi and Daddy Long Legs. Fred Astair was the best dance partner, she reflected, because "he had wonderful breath control". More recently, she took a turn as the stylish but agoraphobic Countess Mavrodaki in the television series The Durrells. It is from her pond that Gerry steals two goldfish.

Caron has a personal connection to the Durrells. Her son, Christopher Hall, was the programme's producer.

The pair had an enviable set-up during filming. They stayed at the Linamia Estate in north-east Corfu, which is owned by the publisher Tim Chadwick and his wife, Victoria Chadwick, formerly a countess herself.

The pink-painted, blue-shuttered, sic-bedroom property has an endless series of terraces, a glorious pool, 650 ft of frontage on the Ionian Sea and enough classic charm to placate even the feistiest sphinx.

It is €6,95 million (UKP 5,85 million) with Sotheby's International Realty (0030 210 9681070 ; sothebysrealty.gr