Audrey and then husband Mel Ferrer read Frederick Knott's script for the Hitchockian thriller Wait Until Dark and immediately called their agent Kurt Frings to make a deal with Warner Bros., with Mel to produce and Audrey to star as the vulnerable blind girl terrorised in her New York apartment by three vicious thugs. In Audrey At Home, Luca reveals how much the role meant to Audrey: There are two things of which Mum was truly proud. The first was having played the role of Susy in the film Wait Until Dark, learning to "not see" as blind people do… She had never worked so hard for a film, and she was also proud because it wasn't the usual "Audrey" role.
In her research for the part, Audrey spent several days at the Lighthouse Institute for the Blind in New York, undergoing blindfold training, studying the movements of the sightless patients and learning to read Braille. She even became adept at putting on her makeup without a mirror. The role was so emotionally rigorous that she lost over a stone in weight. Director Terence Young saw that ...she worked herself so hard that you could see the pounds rolling off her each day.
It was worth it - the movie was a box office success and her sensitive and authentic performance was critically acclaimed. Ferrer declared Wait Until Dark as a pivotal moment in Audrey's career She went from an ingénue to a leading woman in it, and it was one of the best films she ever made. The film earned Audrey her fifth and final Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
The filming had been tough for personal reasons too - Sean had just started school so stayed in Switzerland while his parents worked together on the production in New York. Audrey was miserable without her son, and her marital problems were coming to a head. Audrey and Mel announced their separation on 1 September, 1967, two months before the release of the picture. Biographer Ian Woodward believed Audrey's portrayal of the hysterical blind girl provided a vital catharsis... an emotional release, while her own personal life was in crisis. It would be nearly a decade before she made another film.
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