Gregory Peck Biography

After she passed away, Peck was once again taken into the care of his father and briefly enrolled in San Diego State Teacher's College after graduating from high school.

However, he soon moved to his first-choice university, Berkeley, and it was here where he got the acting bug and changed the focus of his studies. Despite going on to achieve great things in his acting career, Peck looked back fondly on his time at Berkeley.

"It was a very special experience for me and three of the greatest years of my life," Peck said when returning to the university in 1996. "It woke me up and made me a human being."

After graduating, Peck enrolled in the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway, after graduation, in Emlyn Williams' stage play 'The Morning Star'.

By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film 'Days of Glory'.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for 'Keys of the Kingdom' and again for 'The Yearling', for which he won the Golden Globe.

Peck's on-screen persona as the rugged, decent hero was cemented, and he appeared in similar vein in several Westerns in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was nominated again for an Academy Award for his roles in 'Gentleman's Agreement' and 'Twelve O’clock High'.

With a string of hits behind him, Peck took the decision to only work in films that interested him, appearing in 'Captain Horatio Hornblower' and 'Moby Dick'. He also worked with Audrey Hepburn on 'Roman Holiday'.

After four nominations, Peck finally won the Oscar for his portrayal of lawyer Atticus Finch in a film adaptation of Harper Lee's classic novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

His performance clearly stood the test of time as Finch was named the top film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute in 2003.

In the 1970s, he began producing, with 'The Trial of the Catonsville Nine', and 'The Dove', but his acting career waned until he made a comeback in the horror film, 'The Omen', in 1976.

In the 1980s, Peck moved into television, in the mini series 'The Blue and the Gray', and also appeared in the movie 'The Scarlet and the Black'.

Peck has received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Medal of Freedom.

Always politically liberal, he was active in charity and political work. He died peacefully, aged 87, with his second wife Veronica by his side, on 12 June 2003.