Cary Grant

He was the second child of Elias James Leach (1872–1935) and Elsie Maria Leach (née Kingdon; 1877–1973).

His father worked as a tailor's presser at a clothes factory, while his mother worked as a seamstress.

His older brother John William Elias Leach (1899–1900) died of tuberculous meningitis two days before his first birthday.

Grant may have considered himself partly Jewish.

He had an unhappy upbringing; his father was an alcoholic and his mother had clinical depression.

Grant's mother taught him song and dance when he was four, and she was keen on his having piano lessons.

She occasionally took him to the cinema, where he enjoyed the performances of Charlie Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain, and Broncho Billy Anderson.

He was sent to Bishop Road Primary School, Bristol, when he was 4 1⁄2.

Grant's biographer Graham McCann claimed that his mother "did not know how to give affection and did not know how to receive it either".

Biographer Geoffrey Wansell notes that his mother blamed herself bitterly for the death of Grant's brother John, and never recovered from it.

Grant acknowledged that his negative experiences with his mother affected his relationships with women later in life.

She frowned on alcohol and tobacco, and would reduce pocket money for minor mishaps.

Grant attributed her behavior to overprotectiveness, fearing that she would lose him as she did John.

When Grant was nine, his father placed his mother in Glenside Hospital, a mental institution, and told him she had gone away on a "long holiday", later declaring that she had died.

Grant grew up resenting his mother, particularly after being told she left the family.

After she was institutionalised, Grant and his father moved into Grant's grandmother's home in Bristol.

When Grant was ten, his father remarried and started a new family.

Grant did not learn that his mother was still alive until he was 31, his father confessing to the lie shortly before his own death.

Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor.

He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, lighthearted approach to acting, and sense of comedic timing.

He was one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.

Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904, at 15 Hughenden Road in the northern Bristol, England suburb of Horfield.

He established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s.

Grant initially appeared in crime films and dramas, such as Blonde Venus (1932) and She Done Him Wrong (1933), but later gained renown for his performances in romantic screwball comedies such as The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), and The Philadelphia Story (1940).

These pictures are frequently cited among the greatest comedy films of all time.

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Grant was married five times, three of them elopements with actresses Virginia Cherrill (1934–1935), Betsy Drake (1949–1962), and Dyan Cannon (1965–1968).

He had daughter Jennifer Grant with Cannon.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Grant had a close working relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast him in four films: Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959).

For the suspense-dramas Suspicion and Notorious, Grant took on darker, morally ambiguous characters, both challenging Grant's screen persona and his acting abilities.

Toward the end of his career he starred in the romantic films Indiscreet (1958), Operation Petticoat (1959), That Touch of Mink (1962), and Charade (1963).

He is remembered by critics for his unusually broad appeal as a handsome, suave actor who did not take himself too seriously, and able to maintain his dignity in comedies, not sacrificing it entirely.

He retired from film acting in 1966 and pursued numerous business interests, representing cosmetics firm Fabergé and sitting on the board of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

He was nominated twice for the Academy Award, received an Academy Honorary Award in 1970, and received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981.

He died of a stroke in 1986 at the age of 82.

He was named the second greatest male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood by the American Film Institute in 1999.

Grant was born into an impoverished family in Bristol, where he had an unhappy childhood marked by the absence of his mother and his father's alcoholism.

He became attracted to theatre at a young age when he visited the Bristol Hippodrome.

At 16, he went as a stage performer with the Pender Troupe for a tour of the US.

After a series of successful performances in New York City, he decided to stay there.