Actor Mel Ferrer dies
2008-06-04 09:42
Washington - Actor and filmmaker Mel Ferrer, who was once married to Audrey Hepburn, has died in California at age 90, a family spokesperson said on Tuesday.
"Mel Ferrer passed away yesterday morning at the family ranch in Carpinteria," in California's Santa Barbara region 150 kilometres north of Los Angeles, family spokesperson Mike Mena said.
Born in 1917 in New Jersey of a Cuban father and an American mother, Ferrer made his debut on Broadway in 1938, after studying at Princeton University.
He also edited a Vermont newspaper, wrote a children's book, and rose to become a producer and director in radio and television before his acting debut on screen in Lost Boundaries in 1949.
After serving as an assistant to director John Ford on the film The Fugitive, he directed several movies, including Green Mansions in 1959 with Anthony Perkins and Audrey Hepburn, whom he wed in 1954, his fourth of five wives.
He also produced the hit Wait until Dark in 1967, which starred Hepburn.
His marriage with Hepburn ended the next year. They had one child, Sean, born in 1960.
As an actor, he is perhaps best known for playing a lame puppeteer in Lili in 1953 and for a starring role in the 1956 epic War and Peace, in which he played prince Andrei Bolkonsky opposite Henry Fonda and Hepburn.
Hepburn, who won an Oscar for Roman Holiday in 1954, died in 1993 of cancer at the age of 63.