At the age of just 11, Martin Stephens scared the living daylights out of cinema audiences as the leading lad in Village of the Damned the 1960 film version of John Wyndam’s classic sci-fi novel, The Midwich Cuckoos . The following year he out-did himself in Jack Clayton’s superbly creepy The Innocents. Becoming one of the most sought-after juvenile leads of the 1960s, Martin’s final film was Hammer’s The Witches in 1968. He had by then decided that his life was not in acting, so he set about the long period of study to become an architect, a profession he has successfully followed ever since.