Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) built a reputation as one of cinema’s most towering figures over six decades, directing more than 50 feature films that remain widely studied. Dubbed the “Master of Suspense,” he became as recognizable as his leading actors through frequent interviews, cameo appearances in his own movies, and his role as host and producer of the television series *Alfred Hitchcock Presents* (1955–65). His films earned 46 Academy Award nominations and six wins, yet he never took home the Best Director Oscar despite five nominations in that category.

Hitchcock began his career in 1919 as a title card designer after training as a technical clerk and copywriter. His directorial debut was the silent British–German film *The Pleasure Garden* (1926). The thriller *The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog* (1927) marked his first major success and helped define the genre, while *Blackmail* (1929) became Britain’s first “talkie.” By 1939, international recognition led producer David O. Selznick to lure him to Hollywood. There, Hitchcock directed a string of hits including *Rebecca* (1940), which won Best Picture and earned him a Best Director nomination, along with *Foreign Correspondent* (1940), *Suspicion* (1941), *Shadow of a Doubt* (1943), and *Notorious* (1946). He also received Oscar nominations for *Lifeboat* (1944), *Spellbound* (1945), *Rear Window* (1954), and *Psycho* (1960).

Other notable films—*Rope* (1948), *Strangers on a Train* (1951), *Dial M for Murder* (1954), *To Catch a Thief* (1955), *The Trouble with Harry* (1955), *Vertigo* (1958), *North by Northwest* (1959), *The Birds* (1963), *Marnie* (1964), and *Frenzy* (1972)—were both commercially successful and highly regarded by film historians. He frequently collaborated with Hollywood’s biggest stars, making four films each with Cary Grant and James Stewart, three with Ingrid Bergman, and three consecutive films with Grace Kelly. Hitchcock became a U.S. citizen in 1955.

In 2012, the British Film Institute’s worldwide poll of critics ranked *Vertigo* as the greatest film ever made, displacing Orson Welles’ *Citizen Kane*. Nine of his films have been preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry, including his personal favorite, *Shadow of a Doubt* (1943). He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 1971, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, and was knighted in December 1979, just four months before his death on 29 April 1980.

**Life and career**

**Early life: 1899–1919**

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in a flat above his parents’ leased greengrocer’s shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone, then part of Essex (now in the London Borough of Waltham Forest). His father, William Edgar Hitchcock (1862–1914), and mother, Emma Jane (née Whelan; 1863–1942), were Roman Catholics of English and Irish ancestry. The household was marked by discipline. He had an older brother, William John (1888–1943), and an older sister, Ellen Kathleen (1892–1979), nicknamed “Nellie.” His father and grandfather were both greengrocers. Extended family included uncle John Hitchcock, who owned a five-bedroom Victorian house in Putney with a maid, cook, chauffeur, and gardener. Each summer, the uncle rented a seaside house in Cliftonville, Kent, where Hitchcock first became aware of class differences between tourists and locals.

Hitchcock described himself as a well-behaved boy—his father called him his “little lamb without a spot”—and said he could not recall ever having a playmate. He often recounted a story from age five: his father sent him to the local police station with a note; the policeman read it, locked him in a cell for a few minutes, and said, “This is what we do to naughty boys.” The incident left him with a lifelong fear of law enforcement. In 1973, he told Tom Snyder he was “scared stiff of anything … to do with the law” and refused to drive a car for fear of getting a parking ticket. When he was six, the family moved to Limehouse, leasing two stores at 130 and 175 Salmon Lane—a fish-and-chip shop and a fishmonger’s—and living above the former. He entered his first school, Howrah House Convent in Poplar, in 1907 at age seven, staying for at most two years. He also attended a convent school run by the Faithful Companions of Jesus, then a primary school near home, and briefly boarded at Salesian College in Battersea.

At age eleven, the family moved again to Stepney. On 5 October 1910, he was sent to St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, a Jesuit grammar school known for strict discipline. Corporal punishment involved a flat, hard, springy tool called a “ferula” that struck the whole palm; punishment was always administered at the end of the day, forcing boys to sit through classes anticipating it if they had been written up. Hitchcock later said this experience shaped his understanding of suspense.