Audrey Hepburn's ex, director Mel Ferrer, dies

In this May 21, 1959 file photo, actress Audrey Hepburn knits as she sits next to her husband Mel Ferrer during the filming of 'The Unforgiven,' in Durango, Mexico.[Agencies]

He originally planned to be a writer.

"I don't think he ever really wanted to be an actor," his son said Tuesday. "He had kind of a stunning face and it got him typecast."

After winning a playwright's award in his sophomore year, Ferrer left Princeton to write a novel in Mexico. Instead he wrote a children's book, "Tito's Hats," which was published by Doubleday.

He spent a year as a book editor in New York, then began his acting career as a dancer in Broadway musicals. He acted in plays and on radio and directed a Hollywood movie, "Girl of the Limberlost."

Back in New York, he starred in the play "Strange Fruit," about a lynching in the South, and directed Jose Ferrer (no relation) in "Cyrano de Bergerac." His first major film role was in 1949's "Lost Boundaries," playing a light-skinned African-American doctor who passed for white in a New Hampshire town.