At 15 years of age, she sang in the streets. The director of one of the most elegant cabarets in Paris heard her by chance and he gives her the name Piaf, meaning Sparrow.

Edith Piaf made her first record which was a huge success and played in many films.

After the death of boxing champion Marcel Cerdan, the love of her life, and after a car accident, she has many problems including alcoholism. It is at this time that she meets a young hair dresser who gives her the name Sarapo. She sang a duet with him and the couple married in the autumn of 1962.