Mel Ferrer Biography

By 1938, Ferrer had made his Broadway debut dancing in "You Never Know", although he did not make his stage acting debut until "Kind Lady", in 1940.

A bout of polio interrupted his career and led him to work in radio, first as a disc jockey and later as a writer, producer, and director. He made a modest debut as a film director with the low budget 'The Girl of the Limberlost' at Columbia, and was John Ford's assistant on 'The Fugitive'. Ferrer finally made his screen acting debut in the well-meaning 'Lost Boundaries' in 1949, playing a New England doctor of African descent posing as Caucasian.

A better role came in 1953 with 'Lili', in which he was a lame puppeteer, but he seemed miscast that same year as King Arthur in 'Knights of the Round Table'. He played Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Paramount's ambitious, but unrealised, 'War and Peace', as well as Robert Cohn, the aspiring writer, thought to be based on F Scott Fitzgerald, in 'The Sun Also Rises'.

Ferrer produced the lavish 1966 Italian-French production of 'El Greco' and that year also saw the US release of 'Cabriola/Every Day Is a Holiday', which Ferrer co-wrote and directed.

Perhaps his most successful film, as a non-actor, was as producer of 1967's 'Wait Until Dark', a taut thriller in which Audrey Hepburn is a blind woman pursued by killers who think she can identify them.

Since 1960 he has worked primarily in Europe, appearing infrequently in American film and TV productions.

Ferrer suffered a heart attack following his 1968 divorce from third wife, Audrey Hepburn. This limited his acting assignments in the 1970s and his production work long-term.