Gregory Peck, who died in 2003, had spent much of his life building an image of calm and unshakeable composure. But before his death, he admitted that the woman he truly loved wasn’t the co-star that headlines had long speculated about. She was the French journalist he had met in Paris in 1952—and he made that confession publicly. .
Peck was born on April 5, 1916in San Diego, California. His parents, Bunny and the elder Gregory, known as Doc, had a marriage that fell apart by the time he was 5. Bunny filed for divorce, a rare move in thee early 1920s, and obtained a restraining order claiming Doc had been abusive toward her and their son. Peck later strongly rejected those claims, insisting they were impossible to believe.
Still, biographer Gary Fishgall argued thatthe accusations may have carried some truth. After the divorce, neither parent wanted to raise him. His grandmother stepped in, taking him to movies every week—a tradition that planted the seeds of his acting career. When he was about 10, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Peck later recalled listening through the wall to her cries at night and reading the newspaper to her by day. She died while he was away at a Catholic military academy, and he never saw her again. Peck returned to San Diego, attended San Diego State Teachers College, thendiscovered theater. He briefly pursued medicine at UC Berkeley, working as a kitchen helper to pay his 26-cent tuition.
His voice caught the attention of an acting coach, turning his focus toward the stage. He left Berkeley without graduatingand headed to New York, where he slept in Central Park when money ran out and worked as a barker at the 1939 World’s Fair. His breakthrough came in December 1941 with George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma in San Francisco. A week later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Peck was deemed unfit for military service due to a ruptured disc caused during a Martha Graham movement class, when the choreographer pushed his back too far during a stretch. He wore a heavy canvas brace for years and suffered near-constant pain. With so many actors serving overseas, Peck became in demand during the war, appearing in about 50 stage productions. He married Finnish-born Greta Kukkonen in 1942 and had three sons.
The marriage, however, grew strained under Hollywood pressures. Still in his mid-30s, Peck experienced stress so intense he believed he was having a heart attack, relying heavily on medication and alcohol. He spent a month alone in the Mojave Desert, concluding he would never be truly happy in the marriage but staying for the children. In 1944, he made his film debut in Days of Glory.
Critics described his acting as stiff, but studios needed fresh faces. Rather than sign with one studio, he negotiated non-exclusive contracts with four. Later that year, he earned his first Best Actor nomination for The Keys of the Kingdom. When wartime audiences asked why he wasn’t serving in the military, 20th Century Fox invented a story that his injury came from rowing, fearing the truth about dance training would damage his rugged image.
While filming Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound in 1945, Peck sensed the director remained cold toward him. He later learned Hitchcock had never wanted him for the role, preferring Cary Grant. During preview screenings, producer David O. Selznick noticed women grew so excited at Peck’s name that they whispered through the opening credits.
Peck continued choosing challenging roles, from Duel in the Sun, which was banned in several cities for its bold themes, to Gentleman’s Agreement, which tackled anti-Semitism and earned him another Best Actor nomination. He also signed a public letter condemning the House Committee on Un-American Activities, a risky stance againstthe committee’s methods. He formed a four-decade friendship with Ava Gardner after starring with her in The Great Sinner and later took in her dog and housekeeper after her death in 1990. In 1953, he pushed for Audrey Hepburn to receive equal billing on Roman Holiday posters, and she went on to win Best Actress.
By then, his first marriage had effectively ended. In 1952, Paramount asked him to stop in Paris for an interview with France-Soir. The journalist assigned was Veronique Passani, a 23-year-old French reporter. They met again after his separation became serious, and their romance grew while his divorce proceedings dragged on.
He married Passani on December 31, 1955, the day after his divorce from Greta was finalized. Unlike his first marriage, this one brought him stability, and he described merasa he had truly found himself after meeting her. Before his death, Peck also acknowledged that he had developed romantic feelings for Ingrid Bergman during Spellbound. He described it as real but declined to share details, saying only thatthey had been two young people working closely together during an intense period.
He remained especially reserved when her name came up, even decades later. Peck died at home on June 12, 2003, at age 87, with Veronique holding his hand until his final moments.
