Acting and performance in Hitchcock

Adrian Garvey, Victoria Lowe

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781526175687
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526175670
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

Despite his professed disdain for actors, this book argues that Hitchcock's films show a fascination with acting, and also contain many exceptional performances.

In this collection, the first on this subject, a group of distinguished film scholars analyse some key performances in Hitchcock's work, covering his career from the British silent era to the last years of the Hollywood studio system. The actors covered range from Ivor Novello to Tippi Hedren, with classic, and less well-known films discussed including Notorious, Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

This book reflects the growing academic interest in film performance, and opens new perspectives on the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Figures
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1: Film sandwiches and corporeal intrusions: the cross-media performance of Ivor Novello in The Lodger and Downhill
• 2: Between stage and screen, silent and sound: Hitchcock and The Skin Game
• 3: ‘The only actor I ever loved’: Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant
• 4: ‘Alex!’: Claude Rains in Notorious
• 5: Richard Todd suffers Stage Fright: the deceptive performance of postwar British masculinity
• 6: Conspicuous identity and the casting of Strangers on a Train
• 7: When the villain winces: Ray Milland and villainous empathy in Dial M for Murder
• 8: ‘The famous Jo Conway’: intertextual performance in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
• 9: ‘A pretty girl with no references’: the role of neatness and grooming in the precise performances of Tippi Hedren
• Index