Trivia: British-born actor Cary Grant (born Archibald Leach) escaped his humble Bristol environs and unstable home life by joining an acrobatic troupe, where he became a stilt-walker. Numerous odd jobs kept him going until he tried acting, and, after moving to the United States, he managed to lose his accent, developing a clipped mid-Atlantic speaking style uniquely his own. After acting in Broadway musicals, Grant was signed in 1932 by Paramount Pictures to be built into leading-man material. His real name would never do for marquees, so the studio took the first initials of their top star Gary Cooper, reversed them, then filled in the "C" and "G" to come up with Cary Grant. After a year of nondescript roles, Grant was selected by Mae West to be her leading man in She Done Him Wrong (1933) and I'm No Angel(1934). A bit stiff-necked but undeniably sexy, Grant vaulted to stardom, though Paramount continued wasting his potential in second rate films. Free at last from his Paramount obligations in 1935, Grant vowed never to be strictly bound to any one studio again, so he signed a dual contract with Columbia and RKO that allowed him to choose any "outside" roles he pleased. Sylvia Scarlett (1936) was the first film to fully demonstrate Grant's inspired comic flair, which would be utilized to the utmost in such knee-slappers as The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1939), and The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947). (Only in Arsenic and Old Lace [1941] did he overplay his hand and lapse into mugging.) The actor was also accomplished at straight drama, as evidenced in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Destination Tokyo (1942), Crisis (1950), and in his favorite role as an irresponsible cockney in None but the Lonely Heart (1942), for which Grant was nominated for an Oscar -- he didn't win, although he was awarded a special Oscar for career achievement in 1970. Off-stage, most of Grant's co-workers had nothing but praise for his craftsmanship and willingness to work with co-stars rather than at them. Among Grant's yea-sayers was director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast the actor in three of his best films, most notably the quintessential Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest (1959). Seemingly growing handsomer and more charming as he got older, Grant retained his stardom into the 1960s, enriching himself with lucrative percentage-of-profits deals on such box-office hits as Operation Petticoat (1959) and Charade (1964). Upon completing Walk, Don't Run in 1966, Grant decided he was through with filmmaking -- and he meant it. Devoting his remaining years to an executive position at a major cosmetics firm, Grant never appeared on a TV talk show and seldom granted newspaper interviews. In the 1980s, however, he became restless, and decided to embark on a nationwide lecture tour, confining himself exclusively to small towns in which the residents might otherwise never have the chance to see a Hollywood superstar in person. It was while preparing to lecture in Davenport, IA, that the 82-year-old Cary Grant suffered a sudden and fatal stroke in 1986.

Trivia: Magical screen presence, fashion arbiter, shrine to good taste, and tireless crusader for children's rights, Audrey Hepburn has become one of the most enduring screen icons of the twentieth century. Best-known for her film roles in Breakfast at Tiffany's, My Fair Lady, Roman Holiday and Charade, Hepburn epitomized a waif-like glamour, combining charm, effervescence, and grace. When she died of colon cancer in 1993, the actress was the subject of endless tributes which mourned the passing of one who left an indelible imprint on the world, both on and off screen.Born into relative prosperity and influence on May 4, 1929, Hepburn was the daughter of a Dutch baroness and a wealthy British banker. Although she was born in Brussels, Belgium, her early years were spent traveling between England, Belgium, and the Netherlands because of her father's job. At the age of five, Hepburn was sent to England for boarding school; a year later, her father abandoned the family, something that would have a profound effect on the actress for the rest of her life. More upheaval followed in 1939, when her mother moved her and two sons from a previous marriage to the neutral Netherlands: the following year the country was invaded by the Nazis and Hepburn and her family were forced to endure the resulting hardships. During the German occupation, Hepburn suffered from malnutrition (which would permanently affect her weight), witnessed various acts of Nazi brutality, and at one point was forced into hiding with her family. One thing that helped her through the war years was her love of dance: trained in ballet since the age of five, Hepburn continued to study, often giving classes out of her mother's home.It was her love of dance that ultimately led Hepburn to her film career. After the war, her family relocated to Amsterdam, where the actress continued to train as a ballerina and modeled for extra money. Hepburn's work led to a 1948 screen test and a subsequent small role in the 1948 Dutch film Nederlands in Zeven Lessen (Dutch in Seven Lessons). The same year, she and her mother moved to London, where Hepburn had been given a dance school scholarship. Continuing to model on the side, she decided that because of her height and lack of training, her future was not in dance. She tried out for and won a part in the chorus line of the stage show High Button Shoes and was soon working regularly on the stage. An offer from the British Pictures Corporation led to a few small roles, including one in 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob. A major supporting role in the 1952 film The Secret People led to Monte Carlo, Baby (1953), and it was during the filming of that movie that fate struck for the young actress in the form of a chance encounter with Colette. The famed novelist and screenwriter decided that Hepburn would be perfect for the title role in Gigi, and Hepburn was soon off to New York to star in the Broadway show. It was at this time that the actress won her first major screen role in William Wyler's 1953 Roman Holiday. After much rehearsal and patience from Wyler (from whom, Hepburn remarked, she "learned everything"), Hepburn garnered acclaim for her portrayal of an incognito European princess, winning an Academy Award as Best Actress and spawning what became known as the Audrey Hepburn "look." More success came the following year with Billy Wilder's Sabrina. Hepburn won a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the title role, and continued to be a fashion inspiration, thanks to the first of many collaborations with the designer Givenchy, who designed the actress' gowns for the film.Hepburn also began another collaboration that year, this time with actor/writer/producer Mel Ferrer. After starring with him in the Broadway production of Ondine (and winning a Tony in the process), Hepburn married Ferrer, and their sometimes tumultuous partnership would last for the better part of the next fifteen years. She went on to star in a series of successful films during the remainder of the decade, including War and Peace (1956), 1957's Funny Face, and The Nun's Story (1959), for which she won another Oscar nomination.Following lukewarm reception for Green Mansions (1959) and The Unforgiven (1960), Hepburn won another Oscar nomination and a certain dose of icon status for her role as enigmatic party girl Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). The role, and its accompanying air of cosmopolitan chic, would be associated with Hepburn for the rest of her life, and indeed beyond. However, the actress next took on an entirely different role with William Wyler's The Children's Hour (1961), a melodrama in which she played a girls' school manager suspected of having an "unnatural relationship" with her best friend (Shirley MacLaine).In 1963, Hepburn returned to the realm of enthusiastic celluloid heterosexuality with Charade. The film was a huge success, thanks in part to a flawlessly photogenic pairing with Cary Grant (who had previously turned down the opportunity to work with Hepburn because of their age difference). The actress then went on to make My Fair Lady in 1964, starring opposite Rex Harrison as a cockney flower girl. The film provided another success for Hepburn, winning a score of Oscars and a place in motion picture history. After another Wyler collaboration, 1965's How to Steal a Million, as well as Two for the Road (1967) and the highly acclaimed Wait Until Dark (1967)--for which she won her fifth Oscar nomination playing a blind woman--Hepburn went into semi-retirement to raise her two young sons. Her marriage to Ferrer had ended, and she had married again, this time to Italian doctor Andrea Dotti. She came out of retirement briefly in 1975 to star opposite Sean Connery in Robin and Marian, but her subsequent roles were intermittent and in films of varying quality. Aside from appearances in 1979's Bloodline and Peter Bogdanovich's 1980 They All Laughed, Hepburn stayed away from film, choosing instead to concentrate on her work with starving children. After divorcing Dotti in the early 1980s, she took up with Robert Wolders; the two spent much of their time travelling the world as part of Hepburn's goodwill work. In 1987, the actress was officially appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador; the same year she made her final television appearance in Love Among Thieves, which netted poor reviews. Two years later, she had her final film appearance as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always.Hepburn devoted the last years of her life to her UNICEF work, travelling to war-torn places like Somalia to visit starving children. In 1992, already suffering from colon cancer, she was awarded the Screen Actors' Guild Achievement Award. She died the next year, succumbing to her illness on January 20 at her home in Switzerland. The same year, she was posthumously awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Trivia: Specializing in playing shambling, cantankerous cynics, Walter Matthau, with his jowly features, slightly stooped posture, and seedy, rumpled demeanor, looked as if he would be more at home as a laborer or small-time insurance salesman than as a popular movie star equally adept at drama and comedy. An actor who virtually put a trademark on cantankerous behavior, Matthau was a staple of the American cinema for almost four decades.The son of poor Jewish-Russian immigrants, Matthau was born on October 1, 1920, in New York City and raised in a cold-water flat on the Lower East Side. His introduction to acting came during his occasional employment at the Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, where he sold soda pops during intermission for 50 cents per show. Following WWII service as an Air Force radioman and gunner, Matthau studied acting at the New School for Social Research Dramatic Workshop. Experience with summer stock led to his first Broadway appearances in the 1940s, and at the age of 28 he got his first break serving as the understudy to Rex Harrison's character in the Broadway drama Anne of a Thousand Days. After having his first major Broadway success with A Shot in the Dark, Matthau began working on the screen, usually in small supporting roles that cast him as thugs, villains, and louts in such films as The Kentuckian (1955) and King Creole (1958). Only occasionally did he get to play more sympathetic roles in films such as Lonely Are the Brave (1962). In 1959, he tried his hand at directing with Gangster Story. In addition to his stage and feature-film work, Matthau appeared in a number of television shows. Just when it seemed that he was to be permanently relegated to playing supporting and dark character roles on stage and screen, Matthau won the part of irretrievably slavish sportswriter Oscar Madison in the first Broadway production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple (1965). Simon wrote the role especially for Matthau, and the show made both the playwright and the actor major stars. In film, Matthau played his first comic role (for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar) in Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966). The film also marked the first of many times that Matthau would be paired with Jack Lemmon. The unmistakable chemistry at play between the well-mannered, erudite Lemmon and the sharp-tongued, earthy Matthau exploded when they were paired onscreen, and was on particularly brilliant display in the hit film version of The Odd Couple (1967). Good friends with Lemmon both onscreen and off, Matthau starred in his directorial debut, Kotch (1971), and starred alongside him in The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy, both of which did little for Matthau and Lemmon's careers. As a duo, the two again found success when they played two coots who were too busy feuding to realize that they were best friends in Grumpy Old Men (1993). They reprised their roles in a 1995 sequel and also appeared together in The Grass Harp (1995), Out to Sea (1997), and 1998's The Odd Couple II. On his own, Matthau continued developing his comically cynical persona in such worthy ventures as Plaza Suite (1971), California Suite (1978), and especially The Sunshine Boys (1975), in which he was paired with George Burns. He proved ridiculously endearing as a grizzled, broken-down, beer-swilling little league coach with a marshmallow heart in The Bad News Bears (1976), and further expressed his comic persona in such comedies as 1993's Dennis the Menace, in which he played the cantankerous Mr. Wilson, and the romantic comedy I.Q. (1994), which cast him as Albert Einstein.Though many of his roles were of the comic variety, Matthau occasionally returned to his dramatic roots with ventures such as the crime thriller Charley Varrick (1973) and The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 (1974). In addition to his work in feature films, Matthau also continued to make occasional appearances in made-for-television movies, one of which, Mrs. Lambert Remembers Love (1991), was directed by his son Charles Matthau. Matthau, who had been plagued with health problems throughout much of his adult life, died of a heart attack at the age of 79 on July 1, 2000. The last film of his long and prolific career was Diane Keaton's Hanging Up (2000), a family comedy-drama that cast the actor as the ailing father of three bickering daughters (Lisa Kudrow, Meg Ryan, and Keaton). Coincidentally, when Matthau was hospitalized for an undisclosed condition in April of the same year, he shared a hospital room with none other than longtime friend and director Billy Wilder.

Trivia: James Coburn was an actor whose style allowed him to comfortably embrace drama, action, and comedy roles, and many of his best-known performances found him blending elements of all these styles in roles that overflowed with charisma and a natural charm. Born in Laurel, NE, on August 31, 1928, Coburn relocated to California as a young man, and first developed an interest in acting while studying at Los Angeles City College. After appearing in several student productions, he decided to take a stab at acting as a profession, and enrolled in the theater department at U.C.L.A. Coburn earned his first notable reviews in an adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd, staged at Los Angeles' La Jolla Playhouse, which starred Vincent Price. In the early '50s, Coburn moved to New York City, where he studied acting with Stella Adler, and began working in commercials and live television. In 1958, Coburn won a recurring role on a Western TV series called Bronco, and scored his first film role the following year in Budd Boetticher's Ride Lonesome, starring Randolph Scott. For a while, Coburn seemed to find himself typecast as a heavy in Westerns, most notably in The Magnificent Seven, and later starred in two action-oriented TV series, Klondike (which ran for 18 weeks between 1960 and 1961) and Acapulco (which lasted a mere eight weeks in 1961). However, after a strong showing in the war drama Hell Is for Heroes, Coburn finally got to play a big-screen hero as part of the ensemble cast of 1963's The Great Escape. In 1964, Coburn got a chance to show his flair for comedy in The Americanization of Emily, and in 1965 he appeared in Major Dundee, the first of several films he would make with iconoclastic director Sam Peckinpah. In 1966, Coburn finally hit full-fledged stardom in Our Man Flint, a flashy satiric comedy which put an American spin on the James Bond-style superspy films of the period. Coburn's deft blend of comic cheek and action heroics as Derek Flint made the film a major box-office success, and in 1967 he appeared in a sequel, In Like Flint, as well as two similar action comedies, Duffy and the cult film The President's Analyst (the latter of which Coburn helped produce). Moving back and forth between comedies (Candy, Harry in Your Pocket), Westerns (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), and dramas (The Last of Shelia, Cross of Iron), Coburn was in high demand through much of the 1970s. He also dabbled in screenwriting (he penned a script for his friend Bruce Lee which was filmed after Lee's death as Circle of Iron, starring David Carradine) and directing (he directed an episode of the TV series The Rockford Files, as well as handling second-unit work on Sam Peckinpah's Convoy). By the end of the decade, however, his box-office allure was not what it once was, although he remained a potent draw in Japan. Coburn remained busy in the 1980s, with supporting roles in theatrical films, larger roles in television projects, and voice-over work for documentaries. In 1979, Coburn was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and in the mid-'80s, when his illness failed to respond to conventional treatment, he began to cut back on his work schedule. But in the 1990s, a holistic therapist was able to treat Coburn using nutritional supplements, and he began appearing onscreen with greater frequency (he also appeared in a series of instructional videos on gambling strategies, one of Coburn's passions). He won a 1999 Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his intense portrayal of an abusive father in Paul Schrader's film Affliction, and the award kick-started Coburn's career. He would work on more than a dozen projects over the next two years, but Coburn then succumbed to a heart attack in 2002. Coburn was survived by two children, James H. Coburn IV and Lisa Coburn, his former spouse Beverly Kelly, and Paula Murad, his wife at the time of his death.

Trivia: Born into a show business family, George Kennedy made his stage debut at the age of two in a touring company of Bringing up Father. By the time he was seven, he was spinning records on a New York radio station. Kennedy' showbusiness inclinations were put aside when he developed a taste for the rigors of military life during World War II, and he wound up spending 16 years in the army. His military career ended and his acting career began when a back injury in the late 1950s inspired him to seek out another line of work.Appropriately enough, given his background, Kennedy first made his name with a role as a military advisor on the Sergeant Bilko TV series. In films from 1961, the burly, 6'4" actor usually played heavies, both figuratively and literally; quite often, as in Charade (1963) and Straitjacket (1964), his unsavory screen characters were bumped off sometime during the fourth reel. One of his friendlier roles was as a compassionate Union officer in Shenandoah (1965), an assignment he was to treasure because it gave him a chance to work with the one of his idols, Jimmy Stewart.Kennedy moved up to the big leagues with his Academy Award win for his portrayal of Dragline in Cool Hand Luke (1967). An above-the-title star from then on, Kennedy has been associated with many a box-office hit, notably all four Airport films. Unlike many major actors, he has displayed a willingness to spoof his established screen image, as demonstrated by his portrayal of Ed Hocken in the popular Naked Gun series. On TV, Kennedy has starred in the weekly series Sarge (1971) and The Blue Knight (1978), and was seen as President Warren G. Harding in the 1979 miniseries Backstairs at the White House. During the mid '90s, he became known as a persuasive commercial spokesman in a series of breath-freshener advertisements. In 1997, he provided the voice for L.B. Mammoth in the animated musical Cats Don't Dance, and the following year again displayed his vocal talents as one of the titular toys-gone-bad in Small Soldiers. Kennedy continued to steadily work through the next two decades; his final role was in The Gambler in 2014. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: Sardonic, short-statured actor Ned Glass was born in Poland and spent his adolescence in New York. He came from vaudeville and Broadway to films in 1938, playing bits and minor roles in features and short subjects until he was barred from working in the early 1950s, yet another victim of the insidious Hollywood blacklist. Glass was able to pay the bills thanks to the support of several powerful friends. Producer John Houseman cast Glass in uncredited but prominent roles in the MGM "A" pictures Julius Caesar (1953) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1954); Glass' next-door neighbor, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, arranged for Glass to play small parts in such Stooge comedies as Hokus Pokus (1949) and Three Hams on Rye (1954); and TV superstar Jackie Gleason frequently employed Glass for his "Honeymooners" sketches. His reputation restored by the early 1960s, Glass appeared as Doc in West Side Story (1961) and as one of the main villains in Charade (1963), among many other screen assignments; he also worked regularly on episodic TV. In 1972, Ned Glass was nominated for an Emmy award for his portrayal of Uncle Moe on the popular sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie.

Trivia: French character actor in international films, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: Peter Stone wasn't the best known screenwriter in movies or on television, but he did enjoy groundbreaking success in those media and in the theater. He was the first author to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award -- and this artistic hat-trick was accomplished despite the fact that the movies originally wanted little or nothing to do with him. The son of John Stone, a history teacher who became a screenwriter and producer at Fox Studios during the silent era and name for himself on Westerns starring Tom Mix. He never lost his father's fascination with history, or with presenting information of all sorts to audiences, which figured into some of his most important works. Stone attended Bard College and the Yale School of Drama, although his career started in journalism when he joined CBS radio after World War II; he later worked for the television news division, spending several years based in Paris. He moved from news into drama in the mid-'50s, selling his first script to Studio One in 1956. Stone became one of the busier writers in television over the next seven years and branched into theater with the book for Kean (1961), but was thwarted in his first attempt to break into the movie business. His first film screenplay was Charade, a twisting, witty, suspenseful romantic comedy which was rejected by every studio, producer, and agent who saw it. At the time, the film industry was retrenching, and there didn't seem to be any room for this veteran of television drama, even with an Emmy behind him for a 1962 episode of The Defenders. Stone decided to take the bull by the horns and rewrote the script as a novel, which was published under the pseudonym "Pierre Marton." The paperback was a success and it was in that incarnation that the story finally began attracting the serious attention of producers and studios, who thought it seemed ready-made for the screen. (The writer never ceased to be amazed and amused by this reaction.) Stone got the story produced by Stanley Donen and Universal Pictures. With Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn starring, Charade was a huge hit, and marked the last time that Grant would play a romantic lead in a movie. The actor was also pleased enough with the script to do play the lead in Father Goose (1964), for which Stone (working in collaboration with S.H. Barnett and Frank Tarloff) shared an Oscar for Best Screenplay. In the wake of those two scripts, Stone was suddenly a "money" screenwriter, with top actors and their production companies, studios, producers, and directors knocking on his door, trying to get him to write for them. He once quipped to Journal American columnist Nick Lapole that there were two kinds of free-lancers: those that have one less job than they need to support themselves and those that have one more job than they need. Charade and Father Goose, observed Lapole, had propelled Stone from the first group to the second in a matter of months from the outset of the former's production. And the writer never had to look back. Over the next several years, Stone became one of the movie business' most prominent experts in the thriller genre. His adaptation of Howard Fast's Fallen Angel, retitled Mirage, starring Gregory Peck and directed by Edward Dmytryk, established new levels of paranoia (and political sophistication) for movies in a modern urban setting, and raised the same kind of conspiratorial shadows conjured by Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang's thrillers of the 1940s to a new and ominous prominence. Indeed, Mirage was among the earliest Hollywood thrillers to hook its plot around the threat of the military-industrial complex. He adapted George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion into a 1967 NBC television special. By the end of the decade, he had also established himself properly in the theater. Although his book for the 1965 musical Skyscraper was a failure, he scored a huge hit in 1969 with 1776. A musical drama built around the circumstances leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and some of the personalities behind the events, the play was an immediate hit and a surprising one, as well, coming to the stage in the midst of the Vietnam War. With that screenplay, he seemed to be reaching back to his father's work as a history teacher, deftly weaving little-known and seldom discussed attributes of the men and women involved in the story, alongside a more honest portrayal of events than most people ever got in history classes. The play also made William Daniels, Ken Howard, and Howard Da Silva into Broadway stars, and they later repeated their roles in the movie. In keeping with the needs of a theatrical (and, later, cinematic) presentation, there were liberties taken at times, but it was still one of the most popular history lessons in the annals of American entertainment, and at Broadway prices. Many of Stone's works were substantial, highly political in nature, if not overt "message" films and pictures that made one think -- and think hard about their plots and subjects. In a sense, he came along at just the right moment, as the mood of Hollywood had thawed from the 1950s Cold War era. He was in his element in the decade, redefining the thriller and putting new, fresh slants on musicals and historical dramas, even mixing and matching several of these genres. His 1776 was the first piece of popular culture to express -- and, indeed, revel in and celebrate the notion -- that the founders of the United States experienced such emotions as lust, a major popular revelation in 1969. It's a sign of his success that the play and the movie appealed to audiences on the right and the left who were otherwise at each other's throats much of the time. Stone kept his hand in film with his adaptation of Sweet Charity, which was made that same year and turned out to be another success for Universal. Most of his screen work during the 1960s was centered on that studio, but when it came time to do the film 1776 (1972), it was Columbia Pictures that served as home to that production. There were extensive pre-release cuts made in that movie by the producer, Jack L. Warner, and Stone (along with director Peter H. Hunt) later provided a commentary track for the restored version of the film on laserdisc and DVD, explaining the changes and cuts imposed by Warner and the studio. During the '70s, Stone remained busy in all three media. For television, he adapted the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn vehicle Adam's Rib into an ABC television series for Ken Howard and Blythe Danner, which won critical raves but never found an audience, even with the seeming topicality of the rise of the women's movement. In the theater, he turned Some Like It Hot into a musical entitled Sugar (1972), although it failed on-stage. And in movies, he wrote the screenplay (for United Artists and director Joseph Sargent) for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). Following the success of 1776, for which he won the first of three Tony Awards out of six for which he was nominated, Stone concentrated more on theater, and was responsible for writing the musical adaptation of Woman of the Year, which won him a second Tony. His later movie work, including Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe (1978) and Just Cause (1995), was somewhat less high profile, while his theater work encompassed such hits as the musical Titanic, for which he won his last Tony. Stone had a sense of humor about his work and a memory like an elephant, which allowed him to participate in (and, indeed, become the sparkplug behind) The Criterion Collection's special DVD edition of Charade (2001), which featured a witty commentary by the screenwriter and director Stanley Donen that was nearly as entertaining as the movie itself.

Trivia: Mel Ferrer dropped out of Princeton University in his sophomore year to become an actor in summer stock; meanwhile he worked as an editor for a small Vermont newspaper and wrote a children's book. He debuted on Broadway in 1938 as a chorus dancer; two years later, he made his debut as an actor. A bout with polio interrupted his career and lead him to work in radio, first as a small-station disc jockey and later as a writer, producer, and director of radio shows for NBC. Having not acted in any films, Ferrer directed his first movie, The Girl of the Limberlost, in 1945; the year in which he also returned to Broadway. After assisting John Ford on the film The Fugitive (1947), he debuted onscreen in Lost Boundaries (1949). Ferrer went on to appear in numerous movies, where he was usually cast as a sensitive, quiet, somewhat stiff leading man; his best-known role was as the lame puppeteer in Lili (1953). He continued to direct films, most of which were unexceptional, then began producing in the late '60s. Since 1960 he has worked primarily in Europe, appearing infrequently in American film and TV productions. His third wife was actress Audrey Hepburn, whom he directed in Green Mansions (1959). He later produced her film Wait Until Dark (1967).