If it weren’t for a theater director at the University of California, Berkeley, who urged Eldred Gregory Peck to give acting a try, the world might never have known the legendary artist. But thankfully for movie audiences, Peck dropped his pre-med studies (and later his first name), switching his major to English and setting the stage for him to become one of Hollywood’s most prolific leading men of his generation.
“Actor” was just one of Peck’s roles in life. An outspoken civil rights activist, he marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 and ended up on President Richard Nixon‘s “enemies list” in the early 1970s. Though he was known as one of the last gentlemen of Hollywood’s golden age due to his humility, morality, and kindness, Peck was far from a pushover. “I can be tough and combative when the occasion demands,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1974. “I have my share of vanity. I couldn’t have survived for 30 years in the highly competitive business of movies without being stubborn and, when necessary, hard.”