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Cary Grant’s Family Secrets Revealed: Why He Spent Decades Running From His Childhood Pain

Cary Grant's family had some dark secrets and the actor spent decades running from his painful childhood. Closer takes a deeper look inside his early years.

Elias and Elsie Leach, a young couple in working-class Bristol, England, tried to give their only son, Archie, a good life, but poverty, grief and conflict tarnished their best intentions. His dislike of Bristol’s cold winters made him try “to spend every possible moment where the sun shines warmest.” Cary’s lack of a formal education gave him an insatiable thirst for knowledge and self-improvement. “It really isn’t clear to me how mentally ill the mother was when she was put into the asylum,” says Mark Glancy, author of Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend, who read Elsie’s psychiatric evaluation.

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