While studying for pre-med, Gregory Peck got the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation in Emlyn Williams’ play The Morning Star (1942). By 1943, he had moved to Hollywood, where he made his mark in the film Days of Glory.

Peck’s screen presence in this and the following movies saw him become popular as a tall, rugged, heroic character with a basic decency that would transcend his roles.

After being nominated four times, he finally won an Oscar for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Gregory Peck’s mother, Katherine Ashe, from Dingle, Co. Kerry, was a relative of Thomas Ashe, who died on hunger strike. Peck has maintained his Irish connections all his life.

In 1970 he lived for a time in Galway in the house of director John Huston and became a regular in Garavan’s, a famous local pub. In The Scarlet and the Black, he portrayed Monsignor Hugh Flaherty, the Cork-born Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican who safely spirited away thousands of people from the horror of the Nazis.

In 1969, Peck was the winner of the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian decoration. He also received the Kennedy Medal of Honor in 1991.

More recently, Peck held a screening for Some Mother’s Son, influenced no doubt by his mother’s kinship to a real-life hunger striker, and he has also taken part in a poetry reading for Project Children. The 80-year-old actor, whose one-man autobiographical show is currently on tour, will next play Father Mapple in the USA Network’s Moby Dick.