Martin Stephens on AllMovie

Child actor Martin Stephens was, on surface, your typical polite, cherub-faced British kid. There was nothing to alter this opinion in Martin's first film, Another Time, Another Place (1958), nor in his next few films. Then came Village of the Damned (1960), in which Martin was cast as a coldblooded, steely-eyed telepathic child who, as a result of a scientific experiment gone awry, organizes the other children in his village to overtake the world. Such was the power of this performance that Village of the Damned is one of the very few films in history (outside of The Good Son) where the audience is rooting for a child to be killed off! Martin followed this eerie performance with his portrayal of a young aristocrat guided into deadly behavior by a malevolent ghost in The Innocents (1961). At one point in the early '60s, Martin was the most popular child actor in England, but by the mid '60s he lost all interest in performing. At last report, Martin Stephens was contentedly employed as a London architect.