Cary Grant named the best actor he ever worked with: “The most extraordinary ever”
As one of Hollywood’s definitive leading men, Cary Grant spent his career embodying the idealised version of what a movie star was supposed to be.
He was tall, handsome, charismatic, charming, suave, personable, and above all, an engaging presence who was just as comfortable in drama as he was in comedy and thrillers. As a result, he spent his career being one of the most in-demand talents around, which brought him into contact with the best in the business.
His four films with Alfred Hitchcock saw him work alongside Joan Fontaine, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, and Eva Marie Saint in Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest, respectively, while he generated sparks aplenty with Katharine Hepburn in Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby.
He reunited with Hepburn in the timeless caper The Philadelphia Story with Jimmy Stewart, smouldered opposite Doris Day in That Touch of Mink, and headlined the star-studded cast of Charade with Audrey Hepburn, James Coburn, Walter Matthau, and George Kennedy. In an era packed full of future legends, Grant worked with the majority of them.
That was par for the course when he was a fixture of the A-list for so long, and he could have added another major feather to his cap if he hadn’t declined the opportunity to play James Bond. At the time, Grant didn’t think a guy in his late 50s should be playing a secret agent who was eyed as having franchise potential, not that he needed to embody 007 to burnish his own legacy.
In the final interview conducted before his death in November 1986 at the age of 82, Grant cast his eyes back across the entirety of his career, where he was asked to name the best actor he’d ever worked with. As mentioned, there were plenty to choose from looking at his scene partners over the years, but there wasn’t much deliberation on his part when it came to coming up with an answer.
“I’ve worked with many fine actresses. But in my opinion, the best actress I ever worked with was Grace Kelly,” he said. “Ingrid, Audrey, and Deborah Kerr were splendid, splendid actresses, but Grace was utterly relaxed; the most extraordinary actress ever. Her mind was razor-keen, but she was relaxed while she was doing it. I appreciated that. It’s not an easy profession, despite what most people think.”
To Catch a Thief was the one and only feature Grant and Kelly starred in together, but that was enough to make up his mind. He was more than 50 years removed from his first movie and three decades on from the Hitchcock classic, but it speaks volumes to the way he viewed the future Princess of Monaco that nobody he worked with before or since had come close to matching her “extraordinary” gifts.
