Actor-director Mel Ferrer, dies; husband of Audrey Hepburn

LOS ANGELES (AP)—Mel Ferrer, the tall, darkly handsome star of such classic films as “Lili,” ‘’War and Peace” and “The Sun Also Rises,” as well as producer and director of movies starring his wife, Audrey Hepburn, has died at age 90.

Ferrer died Monday at a Santa Barbara convalescent home, his son Mark Ferrer said Tuesday.

Ferrer’s most impressive film role came in 1953 in “Lili.” He played a rippled carnival puppeteer with whom a French orphan (played by Leslie Caron) falls in love.

He also won critical acclaim as Luis Bello in Robert Rossen’s 1951 depiction of the public and private life of a bullfighter in “The Brave Bulls,” based on a Tom Lea book, and starred opposite Hepburn in 1956’s “War and Peace.”

In later years, he turned more to directing and producing for movies and TV.

“Acting, at times, depresses Mel,” Hepburn once said. “Directing lifts him. He’s so relaxed at it that I just know it is the job he loves.”

He and Hepburn had become engaged in 1954 when they appeared together in the New York play “Ondine.” They married later that year in Burgenstock, Switzerland.

The pair divorced in 1968 and Ferrer married his fourth wife, Elizabeth Soukhotine, in 1971. She survives him.

Ferrer and Hepburn costarred in a television version of “Mayerling,” and Ferrer directed Hepburn in the 1959 film “Green Mansions.”

He also produced one of Hepburn’s greatest film triumphs, 1967’s “Wait Until Dark,” a terrifying thriller in which she portrays a blind woman terrorized by drug dealers who break into her home.

In all, he appeared in more than 100 films and made-for-television movies, directed nine films and produced nine more.

Survivors include his wife, children and several grandchildren.