[2] His scores for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations.

[10] He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris from age 11, working with, among others, Nadia Boulanger[10] and graduated with top honors as both a composer and a pianist.

He also composed music for Joseph Losey's Eva (1962), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) (which features "The Windmills of Your Mind"), Ice Station Zebra (1968), The Picasso Summer (1969), The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970), The Go-Between (1971), Summer of '42 (1971), Clint Eastwood's Breezy (1973), The Three Musketeers (1973), Orson Welles's last-completed film F for Fake (1974), TriStar Pictures 1998 family film Madeline, and would later compose the score for Welles's posthumously released movie The Other Side of the Wind (2018).

[17] In 1997, Legrand composed the score for the musical Le Passe-muraille, with a book by Didier Van Cauwelaert.

[20] Later he recorded Legrand Affair with Melissa Errico,[20] a 100-piece symphony orchestra that included songs with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.

Marguerite is set during World War II in occupied Paris, and was inspired by the romantic novel La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils.