William Millar (4 July 1931 – 2 June 1977), better known by his stage name Stephen Boyd, was an actor from Northern Ireland. He emerged as a leading man during the late 1950s with his role as the villainous Messala in Ben-Hur (1959), a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. He received his second Golden Globe nomination for the musical Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962).
Boyd also appeared, sometimes as a hero and sometimes as a malefactor, in the major big-screen productions The Man Who Never Was (1956), The Night Heaven Fell (1958), The Bravados (1958), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Genghis Khan (1965), Fantastic Voyage (1966), The Bible: In the Beginning... (also 1966), and Shalako (1968).
Biography Early life Stephen Boyd was born on 4 July 1931 in Whitehouse in Newtownabbey, County Antrim."Stephen Boyd: The Busker Who Became a Screen Idol" BBC News; retrieved 14 April 2014. He was the youngest of nine children born to Scots-Irish Canadian parents, James Alexander Millar and his wife Martha Boyd. At a very early age, William, or Billy as he was known, moved with the family to live in Glengormley. Boyd was raised Presbyterian and attended the local primary school and Ballyclare High School.
At the age of 14, Boyd quit school to work and earn money to help support his family. He eventually joined the Ulster Group Theatre, where he learned the behind-the-scenes tasks of the theatre. He became well known in Belfast for his contributions as a gravel-voiced policeman on The McCooeys, the story of a Belfast family written by Joseph Tomelty that was broadcast on the Northern Irish section of the BBC Home Service.The Journal News – White Plains New York, 9 July 1969
Boyd eventually worked his way up to character parts and then starring roles. By nineteen he had toured Canada with summer stock companies. In 1950, he made a coast-to-coast tour of America with the Clare Tree Major Company,Stephen Boyd, The Man Who Never Wants to Pour Another Coffee by John Neal performing A Streetcar Named Desire Daily News, New York 5 May 1963 in the lead role as Stanley Kowalski. Boyd later recalled this as "the best performance I ever gave in my life".Movieland magazine interview December 1962
By the time he was 20, Boyd had a wide range of theatre experience, but he longed for the big stage.Movie Screen Stephen Boyd Interview, June 1960 In 1952, he moved to London and worked in a cafeteria and busked outside a cinema in Leicester Square to get money as he was literally close to starvation. Boyd caught his first break as a doorman at the Odeon Theatre.
The Leicester Square Cinema across the street recruited him to usher attendees during the British Academy Awards in the early 1950s. During the awards ceremony, he was noticed by actor Sir Michael Redgrave, who used his connections to introduce Boyd to the director of the Windsor Repertory Group. At this point, Boyd's stage career in the UK began to flourish with performances in "The Deep Blue Sea" and "Barnett's Folly".Movieland magazine, December 1962
Early roles Boyd's first role that brought him acclaim was as a pro-Nazi Irish spy in the movie The Man Who Never Was, based on the book by Ewen Montagu. The movie was released in April 1956.
Shortly thereafter, he signed a ten-year contract with 20th Century Fox studios,Hedda Hopper, Los Angeles Times, 29 May 1956 which began prepping him for Hollywood, but it was a while until Boyd actually set foot on a Hollywood back-lot. Boyd's next stop was Portugal, where he acted in A Hill in Korea, which also featured future stars Michael Caine and Robert Shaw.Michael Caine, What's it all About?, page 114-115 In June 1956, Boyd was cast in the shipwreck drama Abandon Ship! for Columbia Studios starring Tyrone Power. This was filmed in the summer of 1956 in London, where the British Navy built a huge 35,000-gallon water tank for the movie.St. Louis Dispatch 14 July 1956
In November 1956, for Twentieth Century Fox, Boyd travelled to the British West Indies as part of a large ensemble cast in Darryl Zanuck's racially provocative film Island in the Sun starring Dorothy Dandridge, based on the Alec Waugh novel.The Corpus Christi Caller, 27 November 1956 Boyd portrayed a young English aristocrat who becomes the lover of Joan Collins. Boyd was loaned out to the J. Arthur Rank production of Seven Thunders (Beast of Marseilles), a World War II romance set in Nazi-occupied Marseille.The Los Angeles Times, 23 March 1957 This movie was filmed on location in Marseille and at Pinewood Studios in London in the spring of 1957 and featured Boyd in his most prominent starring film role yet.
Around the same time, French actress Brigitte Bardot was given the opportunity to cast her own leading man in her next movie after her success in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman, and she chose Boyd. From August to October 1957,Philadelphia Inquirer 29 August 195' Bardot, Boyd, and Alida Valli filmed the lusty romance The Night Heaven Fell, directed by Roger Vadim in Paris and in the region of Málaga, Spain, specifically the small, whitewashed town of Mijas.Ottawa Citizen 15 February 1958 Being in the Bardot spotlight added much to Boyd's film credit, in addition to bringing him notice in Hollywood.The Salt Lake Tribune, 24 June 1958, "Ireland's Boyd- A Man Apart — And all Because of Bardot"
Boyd finally arrived in Hollywood in January 1958 to take on his first true Hollywood role as the leader of a quartet of renegade outlaws in the Twentieth Century Fox western The Bravados, which starred Gregory Peck and Joan Collins. Even though this was a Hollywood production, the actual filming took place in Morelia, Mexico.Lee Belser, Lubbock Evening Journal, 28 February 1958
Ben-Hur After the filming of The Bravados was complete in late March 1958, Boyd returned to Hollywood to audition for the role of Messala in MGM's upcoming epic Ben-Hur. Many other actors, including Victor Mature, Kirk Douglas, Leslie Nielsen and Stewart Granger had been considered for the part,The Los Angeles Times, 17 April 1958 but Boyd's screen test convinced director William Wyler that he had found the perfect villain for his epic. Wyler had also admired Boyd's performance in The Man Who Never Was the previous year. Boyd was hurried off to join lead actor Charlton Heston in Rome in May 1958 to learn the chariot racing aspect of his role. Heston had already been practising behind the chariot for weeks, so Boyd needed to learn quickly. Boyd was also required to wear brown contact lenses as Messala, which irritated his eyes and caused vision problems for a few months after the movie was completed. Boyd described the filming experience of Ben-Hur as the most exciting experience of his life.
Years after the movie was released, interim Ben-Hur screenwriter and novelist Gore Vidal revealed that Boyd had portrayed his character Messala in Ben-Hur with an underlying homosexual energy, as instructed to by Vidal when he greets Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) in the opening sequence. In Vidal's autobiography Palimpsest: A MemoirPalimpsest: A Memoir, Gore Vidal, pages 303 to 307, Published 1996, . he described his discussion first with Wyler concerning Messala's underlying motivation, namely that Messala and Judah Ben-Hur had previously been lovers. This was based on an idea by Vidal to enhance the tension between the two main antagonists. Wyler specifically told Vidal, "You talk to Boyd. But don't you say a word to Chuck or he'll fall apart."Palimpsest: A Memoir, by Gore Vidal, Page 306 In Palimpsest, Vidal said, "Over the next few years, whenever we met [William Wyler], we quarreled amiably over what I had put in the scene and what Steven Boyd is clearly playing." Vidal later came into conflict with Heston about his version of the Messala/Ben-Hur relationship and the implications surrounding Ben-Hur.
After the filming of Ben-Hur was completed Boyd returned to Hollywood in early 1959 to star with Susan Hayward in the Canadian-based drama Woman Obsessed. Some advertisements for this movie labelled Boyd as "The Young New Clark Gable". He was then part of another ensemble cast in the adaptation of Rona Jaffe's novel The Best of Everything, filmed in May and June 1959 at Fox Studios in Hollywood and on location in New York City.
Ben-Hur was released in November 1959. His portrayal of Messala was praised by critics. Press columnist Erskine Johnson wrote, "A brass hat and the armor of a Roman warrior in Ben-Hur does for Stephen Boyd what a tight dress does for Marilyn Monroe."The Odessa American, 19 December 1959, "Actor Stephen Boyd Really Packs Wallop" Ruth Waterbury, in her Boyd feature in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, described Boyd's character as "the dangerously masculine and quite magnificent Messala." Modern Screen magazine in 1960 stated that Boyd's ruthless Messala had "lost the chariot race but captured the sympathy and sex appeal of Ben-Hur."Modern Screen, Stephen Boyd "Introducing the Sensational Star of Ben Hur and Best of Everything", October–December 1960
1960s Boyd was featured in the TV programme This Is Your Life on 3 February 1960, which featured many of Boyd's family members and acquaintances (including Michael Redgrave) telling stories about his early life and film career."Maids, Matrons Here Cheering For Stephen Boyd" Pittsburgh Press 9 March 1960 He was being sent dozens of starring roles, most of which he had to turn down due to other obligations. He opted out of the biblical epic The Story of Ruth, which didn't please Fox studios, and he was one of the front-runners to star with Marilyn Monroe in her picture Let's Make Love.The News Review 24 March 1960, "Oscar Ground Rules Hazy For Supporting Actor Roles"
In early 1960, Boyd won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance in Ben-Hur. In January 1960, Boyd made a guest appearance alongside the silent-era Ben-Hur stars Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman on Hedda Hopper's television programme Hedda Hopper's Hollywood."Hedda Hopper's Show on Sunday" Ocala Star Banner, 8 January 1960 In February 1960, he starred in the Playhouse 90 television performance called The Sound of Trumpets with Dolores Hart, which garnered good reviews. He also appeared as a singing guest on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show on 13 March 1960 where he performed two Irish folk songs with Shore, "The Leprechaun Song" and "Molly Malone", and an Irish step dance.Arizona Republic, 13 March 1960
Boyd's next choice was The Big Gamble, which featured Juliette Gréco. It was filmed on the Ivory Coast of West Africa, Dublin, and southern France in the spring and summer of 1961. The crew slept in tents in the jungle that were guarded by natives on parole for cannibalism.
Boyd was originally chosen to play Mark Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in 20th Century Fox's production of Cleopatra (1963) under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. He began film work in September 1960 but eventually withdrew after Elizabeth Taylor's severe illness postponed the film for months.The Los Angeles Times, 13 April 1961, Thu, Page 86Chicago Daily Tribune 11 May 1961
After several months without active work, Boyd got his first post-Cleopatra role.The Bridgeport Post, 11 July 1961, "Stephen Boyd Ends Big Wait" The film was The Inspector, re-titled Lisa for the American release. It was based on the novel by Jan de Hartog and co-starred actress Dolores Hart. The film was made in Amsterdam, London and Wales during the summer of 1961. On 9 January 1962, Boyd was featured in a television film from General Electric Theater called The Wall Between, co-starring Ronald Reagan and Gloria Talbott.The Daily Herald, Provo Utah, 8 January 1962