Martin Stephens: the child actor who gave two of the greatest horror performances before retiring
Throughout horror history, some of the best performances have come from children… Think about Linda Blair as the possessed Regan in The Exorcist, Danny Lloyd in The Shining, Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, or Heather O’Rourke in Poltergeist.
There’s something so intriguing about a child taking the lead in a horror movie – a genre traditionally very unsuitable for kids – because their experience of life is so much different from an adult’s… I mean, few children know the true horrors of the world, and their idea of what is scary, what instils true fear in them, might be totally different – there’s perhaps a more primal, innate feeling of horror that comes out of a child’s horror performance, whether they’re playing a villain or a victim.
Children are surprisingly good at acting creepy, too, which is interesting because they likely have no concept of what ‘uncanniness’ is – but they can sure embody it. That was the case for Martin Stephens, who gave some terrifically unnerving and uncanny performances in a few staple British horror movies back in the 1960s before retiring from the silver screen to become an architect and, eventually, a meditation teacher.
Stephens began his career when he was just five years old by appearing in the 1954 movie The Divided Heart. After a few more roles, he’d work with Deborah Kerr in Count Your Blessings, but it would be their reunion in 1961 that would prove to be one of his most iconic roles. He starred in The Innocents, an adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, playing a child who may or may not be possessed.
This role came just a year after his equally brilliant performance in The Village of the Damned, in which he portrayed the leading child, David, who is one of several children born in Midwich following a bizarre episode in which every villager fell unconscious. Subsequently, every fertile woman in the village becomes pregnant, leading to a set of children who grow at a rapid rate, all have bright blonde hair, possess unique-shaped fingernails, have eyes that can glow, and a shared consciousness that makes them incredibly intelligent but also apathetic.
Stephens is the child of George Sanders’ Gordon and Barbara Shelley’s Anthea, and he proves to be the leader of the pack, standing at the front and typically serving as the mouthpiece for the group of unusual children. Stephens is so cold and sterile, talking so eloquently without emotion, and this makes his performance so haunting, so uncanny… He talks like an adult trapped in a child’s body, like when he cuts his finger and blankly stares into the distance as his mother wraps it in tissue – “It doesn’t hurt, please don’t fuss,” he says, almost robotically.
Reflecting on his time as a child actor for a TEDx Talk, Stephens revealed that his father died shortly before filming of The Village of the Damned began. He was just ten years old, and in a way, playing such a unique part proved to be exactly what he needed to occupy his mind. “Within the three weeks of my dad’s death, I was starring in the iconic movie The Village of the Damned,” he said. “The subject matter really appealed to me, because I’d been powerless at the passing of my dad. But here was a group of young children with immense mental capability, and they had power over adults. Now that was appealing.”
The same goes for The Innocents, which allowed Stephens to dig into these feelings of pain and grief. As Miles, he was able to let go, and in one scene, he delivers a dramatic speech in which he shouts at Kerr’s Miss Giddens before maniacally laughing and running off. Not every child knows the pain of losing a parent, but Stephens channelled that grief into this role, and in doing so, he made cinema history, as well as finding a sense of catharsis.
He continued, “My extraordinary screaming scene at the end of The Innocents was my one and only opportunity to express the hurt and pain that was deep inside for the cameras. Somehow, this tumultuous year of my life induced two really intense performances in what are now really highly acclaimed films.”
Stephens’ work as a horror icon is not nearly as well celebrated as it should be, perhaps because he bowed out of the industry so soon, making his final appearance just five years later with a role in the 1966 Hammer film The Witches, starring Joan Fontaine. His life has taken a strikingly different direction since then, but he will always credit those two films – The Village of the Damned and The Innocents – as pivotal moments in his life that allowed him to process the pain of a terrible tragedy.
