Darryl Gerard Hickman (July 28, 1931 – May 22, 2024) was an American actor, screenwriter, television executive, and acting coach.

He started his career as a child actor in the Golden Age of Hollywood and appeared in numerous television serials as an adult, including several episodes of the CBS series The Nanny.

[2] In preparation for the 1939 Bing Crosby movie The Star Maker, Paramount casting agents, led by Leroy Prinz, interviewed more than a thousand children.

[7][8] In 1941, Hickman played a reform-school juvenile delinquent in Men of Boys Town, "almost running away [with the movie] right under [co-star] Mickey Rooney's nose", said one review.

[9] Another notable role during this time included the wartime melodrama The Human Comedy, where he played a mentally slow child.

[10][unreliable source] In 1944, he again played the bad-boy antagonist, cast opposite Jimmy Lydon's goody two-shoes character in the film Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout.

[9] In 1946, he played the younger version of Van Heflin's character Sam Masterson in the film noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

To make it seem credible that Hickman looked like a young Van Heflin, the latter provided a picture of himself as a teenager to makeup artist Wally Westmore.

His experience of working with Tierney was mixed; he considered her to have been aloof and not to have given her best performance, although it led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

[16] Finding it hard to adjust to adulthood after being in the limelight for most of his childhood, he retired from show business to enter a monastery in 1951 as a Passionist monk.

[19] Hickman's ongoing efforts to reinvigorate his acting career were interrupted for two years while he served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956 during the Korean War.

[28] Earlier, in a 2002 interview, Hickman stated that the current generation of young Hollywood actors was talented, but lacked the proper coaching and ambition.