‘Charade’ Child Star Reveals Secrets From the Set With Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant

In Charade, Audrey Hepburn plays an American widow pursued throughout Paris by dangerous men — among them Cary Grant — who believe she is hiding a fortune stolen by her late husband. The romantic thriller was a hit in 1963 — and even spawned a fashion trend among Parisian youth, thanks to the cute sweater a child actor wore in the film.

The sweater, Dr. Thomas Chelimsky tells Closer today, was his mother’s idea. “I was just wearing my own clothes on the set,” he says. The child of American creatives living in Paris, Thomas attended the auditions for the film on a whim. “They were looking for a kid who spoke French and English with a French accent.”

As Jean-Louis, Thomas, then 6, shared the screen with both Audrey and Cary Grant. “I was not familiar with them at all,” he confides. “I had no clue what even a movie was, honestly. I was a very happy-go-lucky kid. Whatever my parents would tell me to do, I figured it was going to be fun and I would just do it.”

That openness helped Thomas win the role, which had originally been written for an older child. At his second audition, he met Audrey, and they forged a sweet bond. “She was extremely kid-friendly and seemed to genuinely like working with me,” he recalls of the actress, who was already a mom to older son Sean Ferrer at the time. “I had a better relationship with her than I did with my mom in the movie, [French actress] Dominique Minot, who was standoffish.”

Cary, however, didn’t have much experience around children and didn’t know how to converse with Thomas. “He seemed to think kids were aliens, and it took a very long time for him to warm up to me,” Thomas recalls. When Cary finally did talk, the conversation was quite adult. “One day, he and I were sitting together by ourselves just waiting for shooting,” he says. “Cary said, ‘Tommy, the most difficult thing in life is to feel unappreciated.’ He went into this long explanation of how he felt over the years that people appreciated him for certain things, but not his real qualities.”

While a lot of the conversation might have been over the youngster’s head, Tommy left an impression on the then-childless actor. “He told my mom that meeting me had changed his mind entirely about having kids,” says Thomas. Jennifer Grant, Cary’s child with Dyan Cannon, was born a few years later in 1966.

On the set, other actors, especially Ned Glass, were kind, but Thomas’ understudy seemed to be trying to get him fired. “He was 8 or 9 and seemed very jealous,” says Thomas, who recalls the older boy encouraged him to run in front of the camera. Fortunately, when Thomas did it and ruined a take, director Stanley Donen was patient. “He said, ‘When you see that red light, that means we’re filming, you have to be quiet,’ recalls Thomas. “The other kid was very upset he was so sweet to me.”

A Moment in Time for Dr. Thomas Chelimsky

When Charade premiered, Thomas was too young to attend, but the filmmakers kindly set up a private screening for him and his family. He went on to a career as a neurologist but still has a letter Audrey sent him and is planning to write a memoir of his time as a child actor. “I did a bunch of acting in high school, but I never got the lead,” he says with a chuckle. “I guess I didn’t have the same presence as an adult that I had as a kid!”

-Reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows