Louis Charles Hayward (19 March 1909 – 21 February 1985) was a South African-born English actor.

Biography

Born in Johannesburg, Louis Hayward lived in South Africa and was educated in France and England, including Latymer Upper School in London. He spent some time managing a night club but wanted to act and bought into a stock company. He became a protege of Noël Coward and began appearing in London in plays such as Dracula and Another Language; he started being cast in some British films of the early 1930s.

Hayward came to Broadway in 1935 with a production of Noël Coward's Point Valaine working with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. It only ran a short time, after which Hayward moved to Hollywood. He started getting work almost immediately, gaining great attention in the prologue of Anthony Adverse (1936). He was then cast as the first screen incarnation of Simon Templar in Leslie Charteris' The Saint in New York.

In 1938 he starred in The Duke of West Point for producer Edward Small who signed him to make three films over the next five years, meaning he was unable to reprise his part as the Saint. However Small cast him in a dual role in The Man in the Iron Mask as well as The Son of Monte Cristo (1940). He had a small role in The Magnificent Ambersons (1941) which was cut out. He became an American citizen in December 1941.


War Service
During World War II, Hayward enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and commanded a photographic unit that filmed the Battle of Tarawa in a documentary titled With the Marines at Tarawa (winner of the 1944 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). Hayward was awarded the Bronze Star Medal While off-duty in New Zealand he "went under the name of "Captain Richards" to avoid the rush of the ladies" as recalled by a waiter at a Wellington restaurant, the Green Parrot.


Return to Hollywood
Returning to Hollywood, he played Philip Lombard in the 1945 film version of And Then There Were None. He continued to make swashbuckler films. In the 1950s Hayward made large numbers of television appearances. He starred in the 1954 syndicated television series The Lone Wolf and the 1961 British television series The Pursuers. Hayward's other television work includes a role as a judge in an episode, "Day of Reckoning" (original air date 22 November 1962), of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Hayward's work onstage included Noël Coward's Conversation Piece, and, in the early 1960s, the national tour of Camelot, in which he appeared as King Arthur. Hayward retired from acting in the 1970s.