New walking tour of Bristol celebrates 120th birthday of Cary Grant

To celebrate the 120th birthday of the Bristolian legend Cary Grant, a brand new walking tour will follow his footsteps throughout the city where he was born.

English-American actor Archibald Alec Leach was born in Horfield, Bristol on January 18, 1904, and was renamed “Cary Grant" after getting a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1932, a name which he legally adopted in 1941.

Some of his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).

The tour, Raising Cary Grant: The Bristol Footsteps of Archie Leach, will be run by the Bristol-based theatre company, Show of Strength in partnership with the Cary Comes Home Festival and led by actor Chris Wapp on the March 29 and 30 and April 1 from 6pm. 

The 90-minute wheelchair-friendly walking tour starts at the statue of Cary Grant at Millennium Promenade and ends in Castle Park and will lead guests through the theatres and cinemas, hotels and restaurants and the iconic Bristol harbour that Archie knew as a boy and return to again and again for the rest of his life.

The tour will take guests through Archie Leach's humble beginnings who once worked backstage at the Bristol Hippodrome when he was 14 years old and years later became the movie star and icon, Cary Grant.

Tickets cost £12 per person and can be bought here.