Liberty Magazine September 1960

I’m the new Clark Gable. I’m the bushy-haired villain of Ben Hur who can send ladies into screams of ecstasy with a twinkle of his blue eyes or a twitch of his dimpled chin. I’m a 6-foot-1 and 180 pound hunk of likeable lady-killer.

At least that is what my publicists tell me and anyone else who will listen. And, since I scored an acting triumph as Ben Hur’s arch-rival Messala, a lot of people are listening. But the truth is that this 32-year-old Irishman is the meekest lady-killer you ever saw. I blush redder than the loser in a chariot race whenever I find myself face-to-face with a woman for the first time.

I recall the first time I met Brigitte Bardot. Roger Vadim, her first husband, took me up to her Paris apartment to meet her after I’d signed as her co-star in The Night Heaven Fell. She met us at the door wearing only a smile.

"I know, " she cooed at me, " that I’m going to enjoy working weeth you varee mooch."

All I could stammer all night was: "My name’s Stephen Boyd, Stephen Boyd, Stephen Boyd."

My interests: my work & myself.

All this makes me a disappointment with the studio publicity department. But the fact is that I’m more exciting on the screen than in real life. I prefer to be left alone with my cameras and stereo equipment in my old, pink-tinted duplex in the unfashionable section of Beverly Hills, California. I haven’t much interest in sports, social life, politics, business or anything else besides my job. My standard response when people ask me about them is: "I don’t know. I’m an actor."

I have only two interests: my work, and myself. Most nights, I’ll get out my tape recorders and stack of scripts of movies I played in. I’m still working on Messala in Ben Hur, the drunk in The Best of Everything, and the Irish fanatic in The Man Who Never Was.

I think it’s important for a woman who marries an actor to realize that actors are primarily concerned with their work-and themselves. I’m no exception. One woman’s already discovered that about me-MGM publicist Mariella di Sarzana, whom I met two years ago when I started work in Ben –Hur. We married four months later, were separated on e month after that, and were divorced six months after that. I suppose I’m not ready for marriage.

I almost quit "Ben Hur" role.

Oddly, I didn’t want the Ben Hur role at first, because I thought it would be another of those dreary, bug-budget religious epics. Then I heard Oscar-winning William Wyler was going to direct the picture. I changed my mind and reported for work in Rome, Italy. That year was the most hectic of my life.

For the Ben Hur chariot race scene, I had to learn to drive a team of Yugoslavian blacks. Several times, they bolted away, once crashing me through a high wall. I’m only alive today because Yakima Canutt, Hollywood stunt wizard, taught me tricks to stay in one piece.

Each morning, I had to sweat out having my dyed hair curled. All day, I had to walk around in painful contact lenses to tint my blue eyes brown-so my eye color would contrast with hero Charles Heston’s. I could only see straight ahead through a tiny peephole. I was always bumping into things, and had to be led around the huge studio sets. For some time after the picture, doctors feared I’d lose my eyesight.

My armor was of heavy steel, often so hot under the sizzling Italian sun that wardrobe boys had to wear gloves to remove it. What was left of my skin got peeled when they plastered me with blood-and-muck makeup in my death scenes. It took three men three hours each time to strip off the rubber adhesive and red goo. Today, my skin still bleeds whenever I get run down.

But it was all worth it. For Ben Hur brought me a $50,000 a-year income as well as recognition. My next picture is Darryl Zanuck’s The Big Gamble, with David Wayne and Juliette Greco. It’s something few expected of me when I was born just outside of Belfast, Ireland, and the last of nine children of James and Martha Millar. My father, a truck driver, called William; my mother called me "Poison", because she’d been carrying some poison in her stomach when I was born.

At 10, I joined a children’s acting company. At 17, I was working with the Ulster Group theatre for $5 a week (they eventually raised me to $10). Then I changed my name to Stephen Boyd (my mother’s maiden name) and tried my luck in London, England. I didn’t have any. I worked as coffee pourer in a cafeteria, and sidewalk singer and guitar-strummer in Leicester Square-before I was chased away by other street singers for not joining the union.

I nearly died of the flu during the deadly London fog of 1952. Then, while working as a doorman, I caught the eye of actor Michael Redgrave, who got me started with the Windsor Repertory Theatre. A few good roles led to even better TV roles, which led in turn to the movies I made The Man Who Never Was, Abandon Ship, Island in the Sun, The Night Heaven Fell and others before coming to Hollywood for a role in The Bravados, a western with Gregory Peck. I walked into The Bravados studio wardrobe in Saville Row clothes and London accent. I guess I looked about as right for a western heavy as David Niven, because the wardrobe boss took one look and moaned: "Migawd, they’ve gone out of their minds".

Hollywood at first was confusing. The first night, when I took a walk from my hotel, I was stopped by police and told: "It’s not safe to walk in Beverly Hills." They then escorted me back. And my hotel bill nicked me for more than my father earned in a week in Ireland. But I managed to save enough to buy my parents a home, the first they ever owned, just outside Belfast.

Don’t ask me where I go from here. I’m being tub-thumped as another Gable, but I’m not impressed. I’ve seen stars disappear overnight. The only thing certain is that it’s getting to be a complicated world for me. I’ve even taken to seeing a clairvoyant regularly-an amazing person who’s incredibly right most of the time. One thing’s he’s predicted: " Stephen, another Gable you’ll never be. You a lady-killer? Hah!"