Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1957)

this fear is not well founded. “He acts the way he is,” says Richard Brooks, who directed him in “The Catered Affair.” “His principal asset, as an actor and a person, is the fact that he listens well to a director and other players. His actions are all normal to the scene and honest, particularly in a role which will permit him to exploit his own personality. I predict that Rod Taylor will go straight to the top.” George Stevens, who directed Rod in “Giant,” was equally definite. Stevens, no man to toss unearned compliments about, and certainly one of the finest directors in Hollywood, has said, “I found him to be an extraordinarily gifted player. He has many graces of the acting art plus an inimitable flair for pure mimicry. He had a difficult part in ‘Giant’ and made it outstanding. Taylor will most certainly be a star of real distinction.” Jeff Richards, co-sharer of the beach house, who stars in “The Opposite Sex,” is an enthusiastic, yet objective admirer of Rod’s talents as an actor. “He isn’t the matinee idol type at all,” Jeff said. “Yet, curiously enough, I think he’ll be a smash hit with feminine moviegoers. His strong masculinity comes through with every gesture, and he has somehow managed to retain an ingenuous quality which appeals to the mother instinct in women. But he has the good sense not to overdo it.” Rod’s social activities are not unique in Hollywood. He likes parties and goes to a lot of them. But night clubs dismay him He is forever asking himself why people pay so much money just to sit around little jammed-in tables in crowded, smoke-filled rooms. No young man plentifully endowed with talent and natural charm long escapes attention, particularly in Hollywood, where studios are bulging with beautiful girls. Taylor, in his quiet, unpretentious way, has attracted quite a few of them, but he insists with his wide grin that the ones he goes out with have nothing more serious on their minds than a good movie and maybe a chocolate malted afterward. Nicola Michaels, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starlet whom he squires about quite often, states with conviction that Rod is one of the “most comfortable” boys to go out with she has ever met. A bouncy girl with a cute mouth and a bridge of freckles across her small nose, she shakes her head positively at any suggestion that their friendship has the slightest implication of seriousness. “We have fun together,” she said. “Rod tries to think of things a girl would like to do. He doesn’t need any prompting. Often we go out to his house and listen to his records and the waves thundering just outside the big front window. Sometimes Jeff whips up something — he’s awfully good at things you just pop into the oven — or Bob will cook a chicken. And maybe Rod will get to Work on that famous Australian dish of his.” She paused a moment, then said with a wryly humorous smile: “One comment I’ve heard by others is that no girl has to wear a break-away jacket when she goes out with Rod.” Now, with some first-rate pictures behind him, and poised on the brink of further successes, Rod Taylor is earnestly and happily on his way. Whatever fortune, a notoriously fickle dame, has in store for him, no one can tell, least of all Rod. One thing may be said with certainty: He’ll keep on giving his career the old college try, like the good Aussie he is. The End DON'T MISS: Rod Taylor in Warner Brothers' "Giant" and M-G-M's "Raintree County." 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