I wanted to be in the movies so badly that just before turning 15 I hitchhiked all the way to Hollywood, hoping to break into pictures, but of course… - Earl Holliman

When I was 5 or 6, I already was telling people, I want to be a movie star. I was already a movie fan, though at the time I thought the actors were actually behind the screen. As a boy, my dream was just to be a movie star; later, I wanted to be an actor.

Oh, my best part was in The Rainmaker (1956). It was my 15th movie and my first co-starring role. I played Katharine Hepburn's younger brother, and I won the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. My competition that year included Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach in Baby Doll and Herbert Lom in War and Peace. But the big blow came when I failed to get nominated for an Oscar. I was at Louella Parsons home, doing an interview, when the news came. It was a crushing blow to me that I wasn't nominated. Louella tried to console me, saying, You're young, you'll get lots of opportunities. Well, I'm still waiting.

After seeing me perform in the drama Montserrat on public TV, a critic in Philadelphia wrote, I didn't know he could act.