Capucine, the patrician French actress who starred in international movies of the 1960's like ''The Pink Panther'' and ''What's New, Pussycat?,'' was killed on Saturday in a fall from her eighth-floor apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland. She was 57 years old.
Her death was a suicide, the police reported yesterday. A Lausanne newspaper, Le Matin, quoted an unidentified friend as saying that Capucine had been suffering from profound depression.
The trim actress with classic, Nefertiti-like features was born on Jan. 6, 1933, into a middle-class family in Toulon. Her original name was Germaine Lefebvre. She earned a degree in foreign languages and modeled in Paris at haute couture houses like Dior and Givenchy.
In the late 1950's, she went to Hollywood, won a contract with the producer Charles K. Feldman, learned English quickly and took a distinctive name, Capucine (pronounced kap-u-SEEN), in honor of France's nasturtium.
Her first film was ''Song Without End,'' an elaborate 1960 biography of Franz Liszt, played by Dirk Bogarde. In an interview soon after the film was completed, she said she had learned acting only during the filming. ''I got much better as we went on,'' she said. ''As the scenes warmed up, so did I.'' The score of films she made included ''A Walk on the Wild Side,'' a sensational 1962 melodrama, and ''Fellini Satyricon,'' the flamboyant 1969 ode to ancient Rome. Others included two adventure films with William Holden, ''The Lion'' and ''The 7th Dawn.'' Mr. Holden, who had a home in Switzerland and who died in 1981, bequeathed her $50,000.
There are no confirmed survivors.
Photo: Capucine (1961)
