Celebrity Biographies
Gregory Peck
“They say that playing bad guys is hard, but I think playing good characters is much harder, because you have to make them interesting,” the legendary Gregory Peck once said. And without a doubt that he succeeded, since he is remembered more for characters who embodied honesty and generosity.
Born in La Jolla, California, on April 5, 1916, Eldred Gregory Peck had a childhood tragically marked by his parents’ divorce. He stayed in the custody of his father, a pharmacist, who worked nights, so he spent a lot of time with his grandparents. At the age of ten he entered the Los Angeles Military Academy, and later received a medical degree from the University of Berkeley, at the request of his father.
But he had no concern about practicing as a doctor, so he tried his luck on stage. From the beginning it was clear that he had enormous charisma and excessive physical attractiveness, which is why he was immediately recruited for a Broadway play. On stage, he caught the attention of Hollywood executives, who offered him a contract. Success was not hard to come by, as “The Keys to the Kingdom” made him a star, due to the talent with which he played Father Francis Chisholm, a missionary fighting against adversity in China.
He was the star that had the least luck with Hitchcock, since Remember and The Paradine Trial are minor films, with some discoveries, from the master of suspense. Duel in the Sun did not successfully avoid the conventions of melodrama, but it does have wonderful moments. After the round The Gunslinger , the actor plays great roles, such as the American correspondent Joe Bradley, in Roman Holidays . And what about “the man from Boston”, an adventure film icon in The World in His Hands From Him? The hidalgo of the seas had the same strength, another classic of the genre. So well did he play the hero that audiences had a hard time accepting him as Ahab, a man obsessed with revenge, in Moby Dick , John Huston ‘s most critically battered film .
After a first marriage, he married the journalist Véronique Passani in 1956, who remained by his side until his death. Among memorable titles, such as My Distrustful Wife , Horizons of Greatness , The Guns of Navarone , Cape Terror and many others, his favorite was always Robert Mulligan ‘s To Kill a Mockingbird . In this brilliant adaptation of Harper Lee ‘s autobiographical novel , he plays Atticus Finch, an upstanding lawyer defending a black man wrongly accused of rape in a southern town. In passing, he offers his children a lesson in ethics. This work made him the first Californian to win the Oscar for best actor.
During the Vietnam War, he knew how to combine his opposition to the American intervention, with his support for the soldiers, since among them was one of his sons. His eldest, Jonathan, gave him the greatest displeasure of his life, as he committed suicide with a shot from a shotgun. By the late 1970s, Peck was still going strong, giving memorable performances in The Omen , MacArthur, the Rogue General, and The Boys from Brazil .
The public always continued to support him, because when he starred in Old Gringo at over seventy , the film was a great success thanks to his presence. The actor passed away on June 12, 2003, in the company of his wife.