DIRECTOR · BORN 1899 · DIED 1980
Alfred Hitchcock
- Born
- 13 August 1899, Leytonstone, London, England, UK
- Died
- 29 April 1980
- Known for
- Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959)
98 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
23 Facts About Alfred Hitchcock's Life and Family
- #001
In addition to his fear of police, Alfred Hitchcock had another phobia: eggs. He was especially disgusted by runny yolks and would never eat them on their own. This phobia was part of his complicated relationship with food and affected his eating habits throughout his life.
- #002
When he was not making films, Hitchcock hardly socialized at all; he spent most of his evenings quietly at home with his wife Alma Reville and his daughter Patricia Hitchcock. This introverted lifestyle allowed him to focus on his creative process and to work in depth on his film career. Off set, Hitchcock preferred a modest, family-oriented life.
- #006
As a child, Hitchcock was sent by his father to the local police station with a letter. When the sergeant at the desk read the letter, he locked little Alfred in a cell for ten minutes and, releasing him, said, 'That is what happens to people who do bad things.' This traumatic experience led Hitchcock to develop a lifelong morbid fear of the police. Because of this phobia he never even learned to drive, since someone who did not drive could never be pulled over and fined by a police officer.
- #007
Patricia Hitchcock, the only child of Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville, appeared in three of her father's films: Stage Fright (1950), Strangers on a Train (1951) and Psycho (1960). Patricia's performances in these productions were an indication of how Hitchcock reflected his family ties in his film career. Patricia also became an important figure in protecting his legacy after her father's death.
- #011
According to Hitchcock's own account, as a child he had to stand at the foot of his mother's bed every evening and tell her everything that had happened to him that day. This ritual shows his relationship with his family and his respect for authority figures. It is also thought that these experiences may have influenced his psychological depth and the themes he worked into his characters.
- #017
During the production of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), Hitchcock is said to have hidden from the producer Joan Harrison whenever there was any problem with the production. His favorite hiding place was behind the couch in his office. This behavior shows Hitchcock's tendency to avoid responsibilities and his humorous side.
- #026
Hitchcock once dressed in women's clothing for a party he gave. Footage of the moment was kept in his office, but when the office was cleared after his death the footage could not be found. Whether it still exists is unknown, leaving a mysterious detail about Hitchcock's private life.
- #028
In interviews, Hitchcock made it clear that he would not allow any questions about his private life. This stance shows the importance he placed on privacy and the distance he kept from the media. Hitchcock preferred to draw a clear line between his art and his personal life.
- #031
Hitchcock's education was quite varied: after attending St. Ignatius College in London, he studied mechanics, electricity, acoustics and navigation at the School of Engineering and Navigation, and then took art courses at the University of London. This combination of technical and artistic knowledge shaped his approach to cinema and his visual storytelling skills. With an education stretching from engineering to art, Hitchcock skillfully combined the technical and aesthetic sides of filmmaking.
- #036
Hitchcock had a love-hate relationship with food, which led him to alternate between overeating and rapid dieting for much of his life. He had a particular phobia of runny egg yolks and would never eat them on their own in any form. His other food fears included cheese and cold cuts. These eating habits contributed to his health problems and weight fluctuations.
- #037
At a Hitchcock course given at the University of Southern California (USC) in the fall of 2000, guest speaker Patricia Hitchcock revealed that her father's two guilty pleasures were Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Benji (1974). The admission shows that, in contrast to his serious and dark films, Hitchcock also enjoyed light and sentimental productions. These tastes reveal how broad Hitchcock's cinematic palate was.
- #048
Hitchcock was a supporter of the English football club West Ham United. He told colleagues in Hollywood that he subscribed to English newspapers to follow his team's results. This shows his attachment to England and his passion for sport.
- #054
Hitchcock named Fritz Lang's Destiny (1921) as his favorite film. This German Expressionist production deeply influenced Hitchcock's understanding of cinema. Hitchcock's choice shows his artistic taste and the figures who inspired him.
- #070
Before entering the film industry, Hitchcock had ambitions of becoming an engineer. This technical interest shaped his approach to cinema and his visual storytelling skills. Thanks to his engineering training, Hitchcock mastered the technical aspects of filmmaking, which helped him develop innovative shooting techniques.
- #072
Although Hitchcock made Frenzy (1972), the film's title and some of its plot points came from an idea Hitchcock had had several years earlier for the prologue of Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Hitchcock approached many writers, including Samuel A. Taylor and Alec Coppel, but eventually tasked an old friend, Benn W. Levy, with developing his draft idea. The story would have centered on a young, handsome bodybuilder (inspired by Neville Heath) who lured young women to their deaths; a version of the character was known as 'Merry Widow Mu...'.
- #074
Hitch, a longtime friend of Sidney Bernstein (the two had founded the production company Transatlantic Pictures together in the 1940s), became the first celebrity visitor to the set of the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street (1960) during a June 1964 visit to the Manchester studios of Granada Television, which Bernstein had founded with his brother Cecil.
- #075
Hitchcock very much wanted to direct Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor and Conrad Veidt in Escape (1940), one of the World War II dramas. A longtime admirer of Shearer's acting, Hitchcock had spent years trying to find a suitable project for her. When Ethel Vance's (the pen name of Grace Zaring Stone) novel Escape was bought by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, however, Hitchcock was shut out of the project. Hitchcock knew he could never work for the notoriously difficult MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who chose Mervyn LeRoy...
- #079
After Psycho (1960), Hitchcock reunited with Ernest Lehman on an original screenplay idea: Jimmy Shearing (a role for James Stewart), a blind pianist, regains his sight after receiving a dead man's eyes. While watching a Wild West show at Disneyland with his family, Shearing has visions of being shot and realizes the dead man was in fact murdered and that the killer's image is still imprinted on the retinas of his eyes. The story would have ended with a chase around the ocean liner RMS Queen...
- #090
Alfred Hitchcock's final years were overshadowed by health problems, which affected his film output.
- #091
Alfred Hitchcock was the grandfather of Mary Stone, Tere Carrubba and Katie Fiala.
- #093
Hitchcock's last, unfinished project was The Short Night, an adaptation of Ronald Kirkbride's spy thriller of the same name. A British double agent (loosely based on George Blake) escapes from prison and flees through Finland to Moscow, where his wife and children await him. An American agent whose brother was one of the traitor's victims goes to Finland to stop him, but ends up falling in love with his wife. It was Hitchcock's third attempt, after Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), to make a 'realistic...' film.
- #097
In the late 1950s, Hitchcock planned an adaptation of Henry Cecil's novel No Bail for the Judge, about a London lawyer who, with the help of a gentleman thief, must defend his father, a High Court judge accused of murdering a prostitute. As a change from his usual blonde actresses, Audrey Hepburn was to play the lawyer, Laurence Harvey the thief and John Williams the father of Hepburn's character. Some sources, including Steven DeRosa, ...
- #098
In 1964, Hitchcock reread The Three Hostages, another Richard Hannay novel by John Buchan, considering adapting it. As with Greenmantle a quarter of a century earlier, the rights could not be obtained. The story was also dated, tied too closely to the 1930s, and its plot involved a villain who hypnotizes the hero's blind mother. In interviews, Hitchcock said that depicting hypnosis did not work on film and that films which tried it, in his view, turned out badly.
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