Gregory Peck

Eldred Gregory Peck studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Sanford Meisner and worked through more than fifty stage productions before The Keys of the Kingdom earned him his first Academy Award nomination in 1944. He moved through the '40s in a streak that mixed Hitchcock thrillers, family dramas like The Yearling, and romantic leads, though reviews cooled briefly toward the decade's end. The 1950s brought global recognition - Captain Horatio Hornblower and David and Bathsheba in 1951, Roman Holiday opposite Audrey Hepburn in 1953, Moby Dick in 1956 - and a string of roles that leaned on what the camera found in him: moral fiber, the kind that held under pressure. He challenged the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and carried that spine into the work, playing men who confronted antisemitism in Gentleman's Agreement and wartime trauma in Twelve O'Clock High. In 1962 he won Best Actor for Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the role that locked his face to the idea of quiet moral courage. He kept working into the '70s - The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, a 1983 turn as a priest who saved thousands during the war - and Lyndon Johnson gave him th