Gregory Peck was married to Greta Kukkonen at the time and had three children, but by then his marriage seemed to have run its course. News reports at the time expected to find an icy and distant movie star, but instead he had settled into a villa in the Albano countryside, a few kilometers from Rome, for the shoot, and he loved going personally to the village to shop for groceries and eat ice cream.
It took Audrey Hepburn just a few takes together to win him over: “It was like watching a flower suddenly bloom; she was born to play this princess,” Peck said years later. Within a few days, he recognized her talent and called his agent, George Chasin, to tell him: “The real star of this movie is Audrey Hepburn. Tell the studio I want her name to appear in the credits on the same line as mine” (according to the initial plan, they were supposed to write “featuring Audrey Hepburn”). At first, Paramount executives were strongly opposed. But, as Peck recounts, “We all knew she was going to be a major star, and we’d started talking behind the scenes about the possibility of her winning an Oscar for her first film.”
One of the first scenes they shot was at the Spanish Steps: “There were at least ten thousand people gathered at the foot of the steps and on the street. The police couldn’t stop them from whistling and making comments. For Audrey and me, it was like performing in a huge amphitheater in front of a packed audience of boisterous spectators. I asked her if she found all this very intimidating. ‘No, not at all…,’ she replied. She took it with the same calm and serenity a real princess would have shown.”
On the other hand, the locals loved to join in on the set. Peck recalled: “Italians are all natural film actors and participated very directly in everything we were doing. Wyler would say, ‘All right, that’s a wrap, let’s print it.’ And they might reply, “No, no, no, let’s do another one.” Or Wyler would say, “Let’s reshoot it,” and they’d say, “No, no, that’s great!” And Wyler usually took their advice.”
When he was just six years old, Thomas Chelimsky was plucked out of obscurity to star in Charade.
Even off set, the atmosphere was carefree, with Gregory Peck having by then become friends with Hepburn’s then-boyfriend, James Hanson: “While they were shooting scenes with Audrey, Gregory would wait in his RV for his cue to enter the scene. He and I would go to Caffè Greco on Via dei Condotti and play gin rummy for hours. I liked being there, cheering her on and watching her. We were planning to get married.”
