This gaunt, lanky and graceful player, who after a successful career as a radio producer-director and as a dancer and actor on Broadway, moved into film, first as a director and then as a reserved, sensitive and usually romantic leading man. Married to Audrey Hepburn from 1954 to 1968, Ferrer co-starred with her in "War and Peace" (1956), directed her in "Green Mansions" (1959) and produced the tense thriller, "Wait Until Dark" (1967).
Ferrer dropped out of Princeton University in his sophomore year to work as an actor in summer stock. When stardom did not come immediately, he worked on a Vermont newspaper and wrote a children's book, "Tito's Hats". By 1938, Ferrer had made his Broadway debut dancing in "You Never Know", although he did not make his stage acting debut until "Kind Lady" (1940). Sidelined with polio for a year, he recuperated by being a disc jockey on a small radio station and producing and directing network radio shows for NBC. He made a modest debut as a film director with the low budget "The Girl of the Limberlost" at Columbia (1945), and was John Ford's assistant on "The Fugitive" (1947). Ferrer finally made his screen acting debut in the well-meaning "Lost Boundaries" (1949), playing a New England doctor of African descent posing as Caucasian. A better role came in 1953 with "Lili", in which he was a lame puppeteer, but he seemed miscast that same year as King Arthur in "Knights of the Round Table". He played Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Paramount's ambitious but unrealized "War and Peace" (1956) and Robert Cohn, the aspiring writer, thought to be based on F Scott Fitzgerald, in "The Sun Also Rises" (1957). Ferrer was in the all-star cast of "The Longest Day" (1962) as General Haines. As the 60s progressed, and into the 70s, his film acting work was often in inconsequential and low-budget films and Italian productions that did not play in America, and he seemed to be drifting creatively. After "Girl of the Limberlost", Ferrer returned to screen directing with "Vendetta" (1950), a low-budget Faith Domergue vehicle in which she is a costumed maiden who must avenge her family's honor. That same year came the "A" list "Secret Fury", in which someone is terrorizing Claudette Colbert to keep her from marrying Robert Ryan. Ferrer produced the lavish 1966 Italian-French production of "El Greco" and that year also saw the US release of "Cabriola/Every Day Is a Holiday", which Ferrer co-wrote and directed. Perhaps his most successful film as a non-actor was as producer of 1967's "Wait Until Dark", a taut thriller in which Audrey Hepburn is a blind woman pursued by killers who think she can identify them.
On TV, Ferrer directed episodes of the series "The Farmer's Daughter" in 1963, but mostly has been an actor in the medium. Although he appeared in numerous episodes of the prestigious ABC series "Omnibus" from 1953-57, most of his TV work came after he seemed to retreat from his pursuit of feature film directing and producing. He headed the cast of the short-lived CBS series "Behind the Screen" (1981-82), a serial taking place on the set of a soap opera, and is better recalled as Phillip Erikson, attorney to Angela (Jane Wyman) on "Falcon Crest" (CBS, 1981-84). Ferrer also appeared in some TV longforms, commencing with the two-hour pilot for "Tenafly" (NBC, 1973), and including Dr. Sanford in "The Memory of Eva Ryker" (CBS, 1980) and Frederick the competition for "Peter the Great" (NBC, 1986). Ferrer suffered a heart attack following his 1968 divorce from Hepburn which limited his acting assignments in the 70s and his production work long-term.