Martin Stephens

For decades, Martin Stephens has been a perfectly blameless architect, but in the minds of horror fans he'll forever be remembered as the satanic child villain of two films. A theatrically trained child actor, Stephens took the lead part in the musical Charles Dickens adaptation "Oliver!" at the age of 12, but became famous for two much more threatening roles. After a series of undistinguished parts in British television and film--most notably portraying Charles Dickens' autobiographical alter-ego David Copperfield for the BBC in 1959--Stephens became a briefly famous child star in two productions. In the 1960 horror film "Village Of The Damned," Stephens' dead-eyed innocence made him creepily persuasive as the ringleader of a gang of children whose intent was unknowable yet sinister. The following year, Stephens was one of governess Deborah Kerr's ambiguously threatening charges in the Henry James adaptation "The Innocents," based on the classic short story "The Turn of the Screw." Altogether, Stephens' career as a child star barely lasted a decade. Never impressed by his talent or infatuated with the entertainment industry, he treated his roles as just a job to support his family and eventually dropped out of acting altogether, studying meditation for a while before turning to his current career as an architect.