Film star, born in La Jolla, California, USA. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and appeared in several student productions. He moved to New York City (1939), where he joined the Neighbourhood Playhouse, and his Broadway debut in 1942 led to a flood of film offers. One of the first major independent post-war film stars, his good looks and soft-spoken manner were used to portray many men of action and everyday citizens distinguished by their sense of decency. Nominated five times for an Oscar, he received the Award for his portrayal of a liberal Southern lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Among his best-known films were Spellbound (1945), Twelve O'Clock High (1949), The Gunfighter (1950), and The Omen (1976), and later appearances included Old Gringo (1989) and Cape Fear (1991). He also produced films, including The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972), an anti-Vietnam war drama reflecting his own off-screen involvement with liberal causes and support of the Democratic Party. In 1999 he received the American film industry's Lifetime Achievement Award.
| Gregory Peck | |
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Gregory Peck at Cannes, 2000 |
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| Birth name | Eldred Gregory Peck |
| Born |
April 5, 1916 La Jolla, California, USA |
| Died |
June 12, 2003, age 87 Los Angeles, California, USA |
| Height | 6' 3" (1.91 m) |
| Notable roles |
Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird |
|
Academy Awards |
1963 Academy Award for Best Actor (To Kill a Mockingbird) |
| Spouse(s) |
Greta Kukkonen Veronique Passani |
Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an Oscar-winning American film actor.
Early life
Born Eldred Gregory Peck in La Jolla, California, Peck was the son of Bernice Ayres (a Missouri-born convert to Catholicism) and Gregory Peck (a chemist/pharmacist of Irish-Catholic maternal descent and English paternal ancestry). Gregory's paternal grandmother, Catherine Ashe, was related to the Irish patriot Thomas Ashe, who took part in the Easter Rising less than three weeks after Peck's birth and died while on a hunger strike in 1917.
Peck was sent to a Roman Catholic military school in Los Angeles at the age of 10 and then attended San Diego High School. Peck would later say about Berkeley that, "it was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life.
After graduating from Berkeley with a BA degree in English, Peck dropped the name "Eldred" and headed to New York City to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Emlyn Williams' The Morning Star in 1942. Peck's acting abilities were in high demand during World War II, since he was exempt from military service owing to a back injury suffered while receiving dance and movement lessons from Martha Graham as part of his acting training.
Film career
Peck's first film was Days of Glory, released in 1944. Though many critics initially dismissed Peck's acting as wooden, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor five times, four of which came in his first five years of film acting: for The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
Each of these early films introduced an aspect of Peck's persona, establishing him, by the end of the 1940s, as the quintessential leading man. Twelve O'Clock High was the first of many successful war films in which Peck embodied the brave, effective, yet human fighting man.
His three biggest films of the 1950s were Roman Holiday (1953), in which he all but defined the tall, dark and handsome romantic lead, Moby Dick (1956), in which he tied the strong knot between classic American literature and film, and On the Beach (1959), a film that brought to life the potential terrors of global nuclear war.
Peck won the Academy award for his fifth nomination, playing the role of Atticus Finch, a Depression-era lawyer and widowed father, in the film adaptation of the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Peck and Hepburn were close friends until her death, and Peck even introduced her to her first husband, Mel Ferrer.
In 1949, Peck founded The La Jolla Playhouse, at his birthplace, along with his friends Jose Ferrer and Dorothy McGuire.
He served as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1967, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute from 1967 to 1969, Chairman of the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund in 1971, and National Chairman of the American Cancer Society in 1966.
A lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party, Peck was suggested in 1970 as a possible Democratic candidate to run against Ronald Reagan for the office of Governor of California. Gregory Peck encouraged one of his sons, Carey Peck, to run for political office.
In an interview with the Irish media, Peck revealed that former President Lyndon Johnson had told him that, had he sought re-election, he intended to offer Peck the post of US ambassador to Ireland — a post Peck, due to his Irish ancestry, said he might well have taken, saying "it would have been a great adventure". In 1972, Peck produced the film version of Daniel Berrigan's play The Trial of the Catonsville Nine about the prosecution of a group of Vietnam protesters for civil disobedience.
Personal life
Peck was married twice and had five children. In 1975, Peck's 30 year-old son Jonathan, a television news reporter, committed suicide by shotgun. career
In the 1980s Peck moved to television, where he starred in the mini-series The Blue and the Gray, playing Abraham Lincoln.
Peck retired from active film-making in 1991, having received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1989, and Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema in 1996.
In 2000, Peck was made a Doctor of Letters by the National University of Ireland. Peck also became chair of the American Cancer Society for a short time.
Like Cary Grant before him, Peck spent the last few years of his life touring the world doing speaking engagements in which he would show clips from his movies, reminisce, and answer questions from the audience.
Death
In early 2003 Gregory Peck was offered the role of Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
On June 12, 2003, Peck died in his sleep from cardiorespiratory arrest, and bronchial pneumonia, at the age of 87 in Los Angeles. Peck is buried in the mausoleum of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Gregory Peck has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6100 Hollywood Blvd.
Awards
Peck was nominated for four Academy Awards. He was nominated in 1946 for The Keys of the Kingdom, in 1947 for The Yearling, in 1948 for Gentleman's Agreement, and in 1950 for Twelve O'Clock High.
Peck received many Golden Globe awards.
In 1969, Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
In 1971, the Screen Actors Guild awarded Peck with the SAG Life Achievement Award. In 1989, the American Film Institute gave Peck the AFI Life Achievement Award.
- on his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
- speaking at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation awards
Filmography
Days of Glory (1944) The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) The Valley of Decision (1945) Spellbound (1945) The Yearling (1946) Duel in the Sun (1946) The Macomber Affair (1947) Gentleman's Agreement (1947) The Paradine Case (1947) Yellow Sky (1949) The Great Sinner (1949) Twelve O'Clock High (1949) The Gunfighter (1950) Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) Only the Valiant (1951) Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Awards (1951) (short subject) David and Bathsheba (1951) Pictura: An Adventure in Art (1951) (documentary) (narrator) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) The World in His Arms (1952) The Million Pound Note (1953) Roman Holiday (1953) Boom on Paris (1954) Night People (1954) The Purple Plain (1954) The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) Moby Dick (1956) Designing Woman (1957) The Bravados (1958) The Big Country (1958) (also producer) Pork Chop Hill (1959) Beloved Infidel (1959) On the Beach (1959) The Guns of Navarone (1961) Cape Fear (1962) Lykke og krone (1962) (documentary) How the West Was Won (1962) To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) Captain Newman, M.D. (1963) Behold a Pale Horse (1964) Mirage (1965) John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (1966) (documentary) (narrator) Arabesque (1966) Pahkahullu Suomi (1967) (Cameo) The Stalking Moon (1969) Mackenna's Gold (1969) The Chairman (1969) Marooned (1969) I Walk the Line (1970) Shoot Out (1971) Billy Two Hats (1974) The Omen (1976) MacArthur (1977) The Boys from Brazil (1978) The Sea Wolves: The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse (1980) The Scarlet and the Black (1983) Sanford Meisner: The American Theatre's Best Kept Secret (1985) (documentary) Directed by William Wyler (1986) (documentary) Amazing Grace and Chuck (1987) Old Gringo (1989) Other People's Money (1991) Cape Fear (1991) L'Hidato Shel Adolf Eichmann (1994) (documentary) (narrator) Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1996) (documentary) The Art of Norton Simon (1999) (short subject) (narrator)|
Preceded by: Maximilian Schell for Judgment at Nuremberg |
Academy Award for Best Actor 1962 for To Kill a Mockingbird |
Succeeded by: Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field |
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