Peck had ambitions to be a doctor, and later transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, as an English major and pre-medical student. While there, he joined the track team, took his first theatre and public-speaking courses, and pledged the Epsilon Eta fraternity. He attended San Diego High School, and after graduating in 1934, enrolled for one year at San Diego State Teacher's College (now known as San Diego State University). At 14, he moved back to San Diego to live with his father. While he was a student there, his grandmother died. At the age of 10, he was sent to a Catholic military school, St. Peck's parents divorced when he was five, and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother, who took him to the movies every week. Through his Irish-born paternal grandmother Catherine Ashe (1864–1926), Peck was related to Thomas Ashe (1885–1917), who participated in the Easter Rising less than three weeks after Peck's birth and died while being force-fed during a hunger strike in 1917. She converted to her husband's religion, Catholicism, and Peck was raised as a Catholic. His father was of English (paternal) and Irish (maternal) heritage, and his mother was of English and Scots ancestry. 2.8 Mature years and later work (1965–2000)Įldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916, in the neighborhood of La Jolla in San Diego, California, to Bernice Mae "Bunny" ( née Ayres 1894–1992), and Gregory Pearl Peck (1886–1962), a Rochester, New York–born chemist and pharmacist.2.7 Second commercial and critical peak (1960–1964).2.3 Critical successes and commercial lows (1947–1949).2.2 Rapid critical and commercial success (1944–1946).Peck died in his sleep from bronchopneumonia at the age of 87. Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. Peck was also active in politics, challenging the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and was regarded as a political opponent by President Richard Nixon. In 1983, he starred opposite Christopher Plummer in The Scarlet and The Black as Hugh O'Flaherty, a Catholic priest who saved thousands of escaped Allied POWs and Jewish people in Rome during the Second World War.
He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), an adaptation of the modern classic of the same name which revolved around racial inequality, for which he received universal acclaim. Gentleman's Agreement (1947) centered on topics of antisemitism, while Peck's character in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder during World War II. Throughout his career, he often portrayed protagonists with "fiber" within a moral setting. Other notable films in which he appeared include Moby Dick (1956, and its 1998 mini-series), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Cape Fear (1962, and its 1991 remake), The Omen (1976), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). He starred alongside Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953), which earned Peck a Golden Globe award. Peck reached global recognition in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing back-to-back in the book-to-film adaptation of Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and biblical drama David and Bathsheba (1951). He encountered lukewarm commercial reviews at the end of the 1940s, his performances including The Paradine Case (1947) and The Great Sinner (1948).
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He starred in a series of successful films, including romantic-drama The Valley of Decision (1944), Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), and family film The Yearling (1946). Stahl-directed drama which earned him his first Academy Award nomination. He first gained critical success in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), a John M. 12.Īfter studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, Peck began appearing in stage productions, acting in over fifty plays and three Broadway productions. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among 25 Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema, ranking him at No. Eldred Gregory Peck (Ap– June 12, 2003) was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s.