Audrey Hepburn’s favourite co-star of all-time: “He had me down flat the minute he met me”
Proving that quality will always triumph over quantity, Audrey Hepburn only appeared in 28 movies during a career that began with a bit part as a flight attendant in 1948’s Dutch in Seven Lessons and ended 41 years later with a cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg’s Always.
While that still works out to a decent average of more than one film every two years, it was a drop in the ocean compared to many of her peers. Bette Davis had made 28 pictures within four years of her feature debut, Katharine Hepburn reached that milestone in 20 years, and Greta Garbo notched 17 credits in less than a decade before calling it quits.
Hepburn wasn’t the most prolific performer in the industry, but she was always among the most reliable. Considering that she won an Academy Award and two Golden Globes from a combined total of 15 nominations in the space of 14 years, her decision not to throw herself into as many roles as possible to focus on delivering the best possible performance worked out pretty well.
Among the leading men she shared the screen with were Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, Peter O’Toole, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Gary Cooper, and William Holden, to name just a few, all of whom were among the biggest names of their era and now reside among Tinseltown royalty.
However, none of them was her favourite co-star. Instead, she fell head over heels – professionally, at least – for Cary Grant. That shouldn’t be a surprise when the dashing and debonair actor was regularly touted as an absolute gift to his colleagues on set, and in a 1989 interview with Bill Collins, Hepburn explained why her opposite number in Charade was the cream of the crop.
“Working with Cary is so easy,” she said. “He does all the acting, and I just react. “Such a lovely souvenir in my life. Unlike some people might think, he was really a very reserved, very sensitive, very quiet person, very philosophical, rather mystic in some ways. And had enormous empathy for other people.”
Beyond that, Hepburn appreciated that Grant could see right through her in the best possible way. “He had me down flat the minute he met me,” she continued. “He knew what I was all about and whatever I was uptight about and was extremely helpful because I was quite inexperienced, really, when I worked with him.”
Whether or not he felt the same way is up for debate, but unfortunately for Hepburn, she wasn’t the best actor he ever worked with. For all anyone knows, she might have been his favourite co-star, but Grant went on record to name Grace Kelly as the finest thespian he’d ever had the privilege of sharing the screen with, even if he had a blast on Charade.
