A licensed pilot, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, but was rejected due to an "impaired left hand." Instead he worked as a civilian flight instructor for the Army and also toured with the USO in the South Pacific.
An expert marksman, he won several prestigious English shooting competitions, among them the Risley Match. He almost certainly won the Army Operational Shooting Competition, held at Bisley Camp. There is a shooting club in Risley, but the AOSC is the main shooting competition in the UK.
As of 2011 is one of three actors who have won Best Actor at the Oscars and at the Cannes Film Festival for the same performance. The others are Jon Voight in Coming Home (1978) and William Hurt in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985).
At the age of 15, while working on a tramp steamer, he got a snake tattoo on his arm (much to the horror of his mother.) Later, he said getting the tattoo was one of his biggest regrets.
At the age of 18, Milland enlisted in the Household Guards for 4 years active duty and 8 years' reserve. As part of his training, he became skilled in fencing, boxing, horsemanship and marksmanship.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 628-629. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
During the filming of Reap the Wild Wind (1942), Milland's character was to have "curly" hair. Milland's hair was naturally straight, so the studio used hot curling irons on his hair to achieve the effect. Milland felt that it was this procedure that caused him to go prematurely bald forcing him to go from leading man to supporting player earlier than he would have wished.
Father of Dan Milland and adoptive father of Victoria Milland.
First performer to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar for the same role (for The Lost Weekend (1945)).
Had a near-fatal accident on the set of Hotel Imperial (1939). One scene called for him to lead a cavalry charge through a small village. An accomplished horseman, Milland insisted upon doing this scene himself. As he was making a scripted jump on the horse, his saddle came loose, sending him flying straight into a pile of broken masonary. Laid up in the hospital for weeks with multiple fractures and lacerations, he was lucky to be alive.
Had a terrible accident during the filming of Hotel Imperial (1939), when, taking his horse over a jump, the saddle-girth broke and he landed head-first on a pile of bricks. His most serious injuries were a concussion that left him unconscious for 24 hours, a 3-inch gash in his skull that took 9 stitches to close, and numerous fractures and lacerations on his left hand.
Has a tattoo on his upper right arm of a skull with a snake curled up on top of it with the tail of the snake sticking out through one of the eyes. The tattoo can be seen for a brief moment in the movie Her Jungle Love (1938).
He is the only winner of the Best Actor Oscar (for The Lost Weekend (1945)) to have uttered not a single word during his acceptance speech opting, instead, to simply bow his appreciation before casually exiting the stage.
He was paired romantically with actress Paulette Goddard in four films, including the blockbusters Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and Kitty (1945). In his autobiography, he wrote that Goddard was "wise, humorous, and with absolutely no illusions." He further claimed that she was the hardest working actress that he had ever worked with.
Once, while on a visit to Tijuana, the FBI accused him (falsely) of meeting with a suspected Nazi agent.
Only got the lead role in The Lost Weekend (1945)) because Paramount vetoed writer-director Billy Wilder's first choice for the role, Broadway actor José Ferrer. Hedging its bets, Paramount demanded the casting of a star to headline the risky production, but Cary Grant and most of the other leading male stars of the day turned Wilder down. Milland got the role by default and won an Oscar.
Ray Milland got his stage name from a riverside street called Milland Road in Neath, where he resided prior to becoming an actor.
Spoke fluent Spanish.
The first Welsh actor to receive an Academy Award. After he died rumors spread that his Oscar had been lost. A Welsh newspaper interviewed his daughter Vicki, and when asked about this missing Oscar, she told them, "It's downstairs in our guest room." One of Milland's two grandsons, Travis, now had his Oscar.
Until the age of five, spoke only Welsh.