Cary Grant

Photo Mosaic

Some souls arrive already knowing how to hold a room, and Cary Grant was one of them. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, he found the theatre at the Bristol Hippodrome as a boy, joined the Pender Troupe at sixteen, sailed to America, and never really came home. That patient, upward climb is pure Capricorn Sun: the old soul who organises a whole life around reputation and the slow, dependable ascent to the top rung. The Sun is where we shine, and he shone by doing, over and over, from vaudeville stages to the height of classic Hollywood.

His Moon in Aquarius gave him something cooler and stranger underneath the polish: a psyche a little detached, a little apart, the eternal outsider who could reinvent himself entirely. That self-made distance was his genius. And his Libra Ascendant was the mask everyone remembers, the Venus-ruled avatar of symmetry, charm and effortless grace; it was very hard not to notice him.

Across screwball comedies and Hitchcock's shadows alike, he kept his dignity and his lightness both. Honoured with an Academy Award and named among the greatest of the Golden Age, he made poise look like nothing at all.