AVA ASTAIRE MCKENZIE

As the daughter of Fred Astaire, Ava has done her part for film dance history by sharing her personal knowledge of her father's legacy with audiences and scholars and supporting the Academy of Dance on Film, the Professional Dancers' Society and other organizations. At a very early age she decided not to make performing her life's career and instead pursued art, gardening and cooking. She will readily admit that she didn't inherit the dancing gene. "I think Daddy would have quite liked it if I'd been a performer, but I've never been able to touch my toes. I'm a klutz. He was a real perfectionist, and he hated social dancing where he would have to dance with the hostess; it made him self-conscious. I danced with him in a father-and-daughter waltz when I came out as a debutante. But he was very hard to dance with, at least for me anyhow - he was more used to a partner who knew what she was doing." Instead, she worked in boutiques and art galleries in Beverly Hills, where she would meet future husband, artist Richard McKenzie. However, Ava, who became companion to her widowed father when she was 12, played her part in his work as a production assistant on his Emmy Award winning TV specials "An Evening with Fred Astaire," "Another Evening with Fred Astaire," "Astaire Time" and "The Fred Astaire Show" and helping him with his autobiography Steps in Time. Married to McKenzie since 1970, they divide their time between residences in Ireland and London. Ava currently lectures about her father's career on multiple cruise lines and presented "Fred Astaire: His Daughter's Tribute" at the London Palladium on February 18, 2001. She is the author of Home in Ireland: Cooking and Entertaining with Ava Astaire McKenzie and appears in documentaries about her father for the UK DVD releases of some of his films.