Gregory Peck’s Son Shot Himself Three Months Before Peck Signed On to Play a Father Who Secretly Buries His Dead Child in ‘The Omen’

The tragedy behind one of horror’s most quietly haunting performances began off-screen, in Gregory Peck’s own family, just months before cameras rolled on “The Omen.”

Gregory Peck’s son shot himself three months before Peck signed on to play a father who secretly buries his dead child in the film.

Peck took the role partly to have somewhere to put his grief. The character he played spends the film hiding the body of a dead child, and by then Peck had just buried his own son.

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