The first of George Cukor's films to be written by the team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, A Double Life is a curious, backstage story that plays on the theater's potential for encouraging a Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome in its actors. Ronald Colman stars as a Shakespearian actor who finds the role of Othello taking over his personality; he becomes paranoic and eventually commits murder. Shelley Winters, appearing in her first major film role as the waitress who becomes Colman's victim, already effects her unique mixture of qualities: she is at once attractive and repellent, funny and slightly grotesque. Charles Hopkins writes, “Ronald Colman was in his middle fifties and had been a popular star since 1922 when he won the Academy Award for his performance in A Double Life.... It was inconceivable that anyone would seriously think of him for Othello, and it may have been as much for his courage in attempting the part...as for the skill with which he portrayed the actor...that he won the Award. Cukor and the Kanins...worked to achieve a more convincing simulation of life in the theater than was usual in Hollywood movies..and for once a stage performance in a movie looked like something you might see in a real theater and not a Busby Berkeley production number.”