Film Star, Director and Producer Mel Ferrer, 90

He won a Princeton University playwriting award as a sophomore in 1937. An agent encouraged him to novelize the script, and he left college and settled with his first wife, Frances Pilchard, in Mexico.

Instead of the planned novel, he wrote a children's book about a Mexican boy, "Tito's Hats" (1940). As his theatrical interests deepened, he appeared in minor roles on Broadway and became a dialogue coach for Columbia studios in Hollywood.

In 1945, he earned his first Hollywood directing credit, for the low-budget backwoods drama "The Girl of the Limberlost."

Also that year, he starred on Broadway in "Strange Fruit," an adaptation of Lillian Smith's novel about an interracial romance in the South. It was produced and directed by Jose Ferrer -- no relation -- whom Mel Ferrer directed in a well-received Broadway staging of "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1946). Jose Ferrer won a Tony Award in the title role.

Not long after, Mel Ferrer, lured back to California by producer David O. Selznick, directed several minor thrillers and founded the La Jolla Playhouse with movie actors Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire.

With Hepburn, Mr. Ferrer settled in Switzerland in the 1960s and played supporting roles in Hollywood and international productions including "The Longest Day" (1962), about the Normandy invasion; "Brannigan" (1975), a police drama starring John Wayne; and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Lili Marleen" (1981), as a Swiss man who helps Jews escape the Nazis.

In the 1980s, he had a recurring role as a lawyer who marries wine-country matriarch Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) on the prime-time CBS soap opera "Falcon Crest."

He had two children with Pilchard, whom he divorced and remarried. His second wife was Barbara Tripp, with whom he had two children.

He had a son, Sean, with Hepburn before their divorce in 1968.

In 1971, he married Elizabeth "Lisa" Soukhotine. She survives, along with all his children; nine grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.