In this May 21, 1959 file photo, actress Audrey Hepburn knits as she sits next to her husband Mel Ferrer during the filming of 'The Unforgiven,' in Durango, Mexico.[Agencies]

He originally planned to be a writer.

"I don't think he ever really wanted to be an actor," his son said Tuesday. "He had kind of a stunning face and it got him typecast."

After winning a playwright's award in his sophomore year, Ferrer left Princeton to write a novel in Mexico. Instead he wrote a children's book, "Tito's Hats," which was published by Doubleday.

He spent a year as a book editor in New York, then began his acting career as a dancer in Broadway musicals. He acted in plays and on radio and directed a Hollywood movie, "Girl of the Limberlost."

Back in New York, he starred in the play "Strange Fruit," about a lynching in the South, and directed Jose Ferrer (no relation) in "Cyrano de Bergerac." His first major film role was in 1949's "Lost Boundaries," playing a light-skinned African-American doctor who passed for white in a New Hampshire town.