BECOMING CARY GRANT

Cary Grant is one of the most enduring icons of the Hollywood golden era. Described by the film historian and biographer David Thomson as “the greatest screen actor of all time”, Grant is without doubt the actor whose style has remained iconic and modern: his image is still used in advertising and inspired Don Draper in Mad Men.

Grant played with the notion that the man born Archie Leach had become “Cary Grant” and this persona hid a constant search for his true self. In 1958, at the height of his success, Grant is a troubled man in a failing marriage. He becomes one of the first people to experiment with LSD and he continues to take it for many years, becoming a primary advocate of its medical properties.

The film opens at this crisis moment, as Hitchcock’s North by Northwest becomes one of his biggest hits and he begins an affair with Sophia Loren – emotional, vulnerable and helplessly in love. We travel back with Grant on his journey of self-discovery through LSD: to his poverty-stricken childhood in Bristol, England, and the incarceration of his mother in a mental hospital, a fact hidden from him for 20 years; his long apprenticeship as an acrobat and stage actor, and making 27 films in Hollywood before stardom. This key period is the making and becoming of Cary Grant – his role models, relationships with men, and the birth of the alter-ego that finally made him a star in 1937.

From his “screwball” period up to his huge success in the early 1960’s, Grant remained a very popular actor – but the real man was almost unknown, not least to his 5 wives. His personal demons, anxieties and frailties were kept hidden. Becoming Cary Grant will reveal how he faced his demons and tried to lay them to rest.

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