Cary Grant’s surprising wish to be “disliked upon the screen”
Cary Grant had the kind of charm that made you want to watch practically anything he was in. Whether it was all persona or not is irrelevant – Grant knew how to endear his audience, and he repeatedly did just that.
You could catch him flapping about in a dressing gown in Bringing Up Baby and capturing the heart of a teenaged Shirley Temple in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer; whatever he was doing, Grant knew how to captivate his audience and keep them in the palm of his hand. It’s not like any of these performances feel manipulative, though – the ability to embody such likeable characters with ease just seemed to come naturally to him.
Despite the fact that Grant often played a romantic lead with effortless comedic timing, becoming a screwball icon (no doubt a skill he learned during his time as a vaudeville star in his youth), he didn’t want people to solely view him this way. Grant actually didn’t want to be as well-liked as he was sometimes, and he often longed for more ‘evil’ and morally ambiguous parts.
In 1936, he told The Tribune, “But I don’t like these white-collar lover roles. I want to be hated, to be disliked upon the screen.” Most actors long to be adored, but Grant longed for the challenge of playing roles that audiences didn’t instantaneously take to.
“Motion picture making is no longer a novelty industry. It has developed into a serious, systematic and efficient business. Motion pictures today demand that players must be actors with actual acting experience, and such experience is not found in straight drawing-room roles.
They are injurious to the average good actor, and soon his only feelings are reflected in his work, until the producers and the public begin to feel them as the actor does. Naturally, this collective feeling leads to fewer roles until the actor is completely forgotten,” Grant added.
The actor wanted to play roles that were difficult, and which painted him in a bad light, although he is still best remembered for his charmingly suave (yet somehow relatable) and romantic parts. Still, he dipped his toes into darker territory every now and again, like when Alfred Hitchcock cast him in a rather sinister role in Suspicion. Hitchcock recognised Grant’s potential for characters that weren’t necessarily what audiences were used to getting from the actor, but it’s still debatable whether he was ever able to pull off being “hated”.
“Such roles require acting to sell them. It’s the type of role that lifts an actor out of the rut of dissatisfaction and inspires him to do better things,” he added. So, clearly, to be a good actor, in Grant’s eyes, you can’t be afraid of being disliked because of a role. To him, it’s the sign of a strong talent if audiences are left hating you, even if that feels like something uncomfortable to reckon with.
Still, after everything, Grant’s best-known roles aren’t exactly hateable ones. He was loved and widely considered an icon, appreciated most for his knack for humour, which always left an unforgettable imprint on the audience.
