To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
“My father was quite a bit like Atticus,” Gregory Peck noted of the character he played from Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
In a career spanning over five decades, Peck won his first and only Best Actor Oscar for his greatest film–and greatest performance!
Lee was so fond of Peck’s portrayal of her justice-seeking lawyer – which she’d based on her father – that she gifted him with her dad’s pocket watch, which Peck had on him when he accepted his Oscar for the role. “In that film the man and the part met,” Lee raved of Peck’s performance, adding that the movie “was a work of art.”
When she visited the set early on during filming, Peck noticed her getting emotional and assumed she was moved by his and his cast mates’ acting. The truth, however, was humbling, he revealed during a panel talk at the American Film Institute. “She said, ‘Oh, Gregory, you’ve got a little pot belly just like my daddy,'” he shared to the amusement of the audience, quipping, “So we got off to a good start.”
