Patricia Hitchcock

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Patricia Hitchcock

Born July 7, 1928 (1928-07-07) (age 79)
London, England
Spouse(s) Joseph E. O Connell Jr.
(1952–present)

Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell (born July 7, 1928, London, UK) is a British-born American actress and producer.

She is the only child of the film director Alfred Hitchcock and film editor Alma Reville. The family moved to Los Angeles, California, in March 1939.

As a child, Hitchcock knew she wanted to be an actress. In the early 1940s, she began acting on the stage and doing summer stock. She performed in Broadway productions of Solitaire (1942) and Violet (1944).

After graduating from Marymount High School in Los Angeles in 1947, she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and also appeared on the London stage. In early 1949, her parents arrived to make Hitchcock's first feature motion picture in England since going to Hollywood. Pat did not know she would have a walk-on in the movie until her parents arrived. Because she bore a resemblance to the star, Jane Wyman, her father asked if she would mind also doubling for Wyman in the scenes that required "danger driving."

She had small roles in three of her father's movies: Stage Fright (1950) in which she played a jolly acting student named Chubby Bannister, one of Wyman's school chums; Strangers on a Train (1951), playing Barbara Morton, future sister-in-law of Guy Haines (Farley Granger), and Psycho (1960), playing Janet Leigh's plain-Jane office-mate, Caroline, who generously offers to share tranquilizers that her mother gave her for her wedding night.

Pat Hitchcock also worked for Jean Negulesco on The Mudlark (1950), which starred Irene Dunne and Alec Guinness, playing a palace maid, and she had a bit-part in DeMille's The Ten Commandments.

She married Joseph E. O'Connell, Jr., January 17, 1952, at Our Lady Chapel in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. They decided to have their wedding there because Pat had many friends on the East Coast and Joe had relatives in Boston.

She and Joe O'Connell have three daughters, Mary Alma Stone (born April 17, 1953), Teresa "Tere" Carrubba (born July 2, 1954), and Kathleen "Katie" Fiala (born February 27, 1959).

As well as appearing in ten episodes of her father's half-hour television program, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitchcock worked on a few others, including Playhouse 90, which was live, directed by John Frankenheimer. Acting for her father, however, remained the high point of her acting career, which she interrupted to raise her children. (Hitchcock has a small joke with her first appearance on his show -- after saying good night and exiting the screen, he sticks his head back into the picture and remarks: "I thought the little leading lady was rather good, didn't you?") She also served as executive producer of the documentary The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000), which is about Robert F. Boyle and his contribution to motion pictures.

She supplied family photos and wrote the foreword of the book Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal, which was published in 2002. In 2003, she published Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man, co-written with Laurent Bouzereau.

Patricia and Joseph O'Connell currently live in Solvang, California.

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