Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck was an Academy Award winning American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the Amrican Film Institute named Peck the 12th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema. A student of legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner, Peck acted in over 50 plays and three Broadway productions. He first gained critical success in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), a John M. Stahl directed drama which earned him his first Academy Award nomination. 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). Peck reached global recognition in the 1950s and 1960s with Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and biblical drama David and Bathsheba (1951). He starred alongside Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953). Peck's other notable films 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 won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), which revolved around racial inequality, for which he received universal acclaim. 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 World War II.