CARY GRANT Was Afraid to Film With AUDREY HEPBURN—Then He Called Gregory Peck and Got an Answer That

CARY GRANT Was Afraid to Film With AUDREY HEPBURN—Then He Called Gregory Peck and Got an Answer That 

October of 1962 and Carrie Grant was calling Gregory Peek from Beverly Hills. Wait, because the answer Gregory gave in the next four minutes without hesitation without the diplomatic softening actors use when discussing each other would confirm everything Carrie Grant suspected. And the film would later prove that there was no such thing as being too old to be in a scene with Audrey Hepburn because being in her scene was never about age.

 Grant had committed to charade Stanley Donan’s Paris picture with Audrey Hepburn. He was 58. She was 33. And the arithmetic was making him uneasy. The 25-year gap, the romantic lead, the scenes that would require proximity and heat. He had already asked Donan to adjust the script. He needed one more thing. Gregory had made Roman Holiday 9 years earlier. He had been 37.

The arithmetic had existed there, too. Audrey was 23. He was 13 years her senior. The film was a love story. Paramount had been more interested in the arithmetic than Gregory was. Gregory had been more interested in what happened when she walked into the light. He had known from the first day of rehearsals that the question of whether the Gap would read on screen was irrelevant because what Audrey Hepern did on screen made all the surrounding questions about screen.

 Logistics irrelevant. She arrived and the camera found the most interesting place to be was wherever she was. This was not charisma. Every good actor had charisma. This was something more specific. An absolute inability to perform, which meant that when the camera was pointed at her, what it found was always real. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who cannot pretend and understood that watching them cost something from you because you can no longer pretend either? Have you ever watched an actor who could not pretend and understood that their

inability to pretend was their greatest gift? Grant said, I just need to know whether it works, the gap, whether it registers is wrong. Gregory was quiet for a moment in the way he was quiet when he was being precise. He said, Carrie, when you are in a scene with Audrey Hburn, the audience is not thinking about age.

 Grant asked what they were thinking about. Gregory said, they are thinking about her. a pause and you should be thinking about her too, not the arithmetic. Grant said that was not helpful. Gregory said he understood and then he said the thing that Grant would repeat three times in the next year to Donan, to a journalist from the Hollywood Reporter, to his own wife, she doesn’t perform love.

 She doesn’t perform anything. If you are honest with her, she is honest with you. The camera catches all of it. The only question on that set is whether you will be honest enough to meet what she offers you. Can you imagine the specific kind of courage it takes to be honest enough for a camera to trust you? Grant arrived in Paris in October and spent the first week being 58 years old in every way that made him careful and measured and professionally polished.

By the second week, he was simply in the scenes. By the third week, he told a French journalist that all he wanted for Christmas was another picture with Audrey Hepburn. He wrote Gregory Peek a letter that arrived in Brentwood the week before Christmas, which Gregory read at the kitchen table with his coffee and then folded and put in the desk drawer he kept for things that had ended well.

 The letter said two things. The first was that Gregory had been right about everything, the arithmetic, the camera, what honesty looked like on a set. The second was that Grant now understood why Gregory had made the phone call from the backstage of the 35th Academy Awards on the night he won to say, “I thought of Rome.

” Some friendships produced their own evidence. Grant had watched that film in his screening room and had finally understood what kind of friendship was being described. the kind that does not require occasion to be true. This is what Hollywood once held in its finest people. Not just talent, but the understanding of what talent looked like in another person and the willingness to say so.

 Share this with someone who has described you accurately to a stranger. Subscribe to keep this era alive and tell us which Audrey Hepburn or Gregory Peek film showed you that presence is more powerful than any other quality. Every memory deserves to be heard.