[1][2] He is best remembered for his roles in Howard Hawks's Red River (1948), George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951), Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity (1953), Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and John Huston's The Misfits (1961).

Thus, as long as Clift's father was able to pay for it, he and his siblings were privately tutored, travelled extensively in America and Europe, became fluent in German and French, and led a protected life, sheltered from the destitution and communicable diseases that became legion following the First World War.

[13][14] The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s ruined Clift's father financially; Bill was forced to downsize and move to Chicago to take a new job while Sunny continued traveling with the children.

"[15] Clift had shown an interest in acting and theatrics as a child living in Switzerland and France but did not take the initiative to go out for a part in a local production until age 13, when his family was forced to downsize and relocate from Chicago to Sarasota, Florida.

The New York World-Telegram noticed Clift’s "amazing poise and dexterity" while producer Theo Bamberger commended him for what he called a "natural histrionic instinct.

[18][19] He continued to flourish onstage and appeared in works by Moss Hart and Cole Porter, Robert Sherwood, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, and Thornton Wilder, creating the part of Henry in the original production of The Skin of Our Teeth.

[20] Clift proved to be a successful young stage actor working with, among others, Dame May Whitty, Alla Nazimova, Mary Boland, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne.

In 1939, as a member of the cast of the 1939 Broadway production of Noël Coward's Hay Fever, Clift participated in one of the first television broadcasts in the United States.

Also in 1951, Clift was cast for the first time as Tom in the radio world premiere of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, with Helen Hayes (Amanda) and Karl Malden (the Gentleman Caller), for The Theatre Guild on the Air.

Immediately following the end of the war in September 1945 (in what would be Clift's penultimate Broadway performance,) he starred in the stage adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's short story You Touched Me.

The film received added media attention due to the rumors that Clift and co-star Elizabeth Taylor were dating in real life.

For the latter, Clift committed to building strength and endurance by jogging laps around Hollywood High School, learning boxing from Mushy Callahan and author James Jones, and how to imitate playing the bugle and reading sheet music from trumpeter Mannie Klein for the role of middleweight boxer and bugle-playing soldier Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt.

[48] On the evening of May 12, 1956, while filming Raintree County, Clift was involved in a serious car crash after leaving a dinner party in Beverly Hills, California hosted by Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Michael Wilding.

Alerted by friend Kevin McCarthy, who witnessed the collision, Taylor found Clift under the shattered dashboard, conscious but with his face bleeding and swelling rapidly.

[54] Although the results of Clift's plastic surgeries were remarkable for the time in leaving no visible scars, there were noticeable differences in his facial appearance, particularly the left side of his face, which was nearly immobile.

Continued pain from his injuries led him to rely on alcohol and pills for relief, as he had done after an earlier bout with dysentery left him with chronic intestinal problems.

Still, the last half of his 20-year career has been referred to as the "longest suicide in Hollywood history" by acting teacher Robert Lewis because of Clift's subsequent abuse of painkillers and alcohol.

With his next two films, The Misfits (1961) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Clift pivoted to somewhat smaller supporting or cameo roles that required less overall screen time while still delivering demanding performances.

Playing the faded rodeo rider Perce Howland in The Misfits, his first, introductory scene, performed inside a phone booth, only took two hours of the scheduled two shooting days, which impressed cast and crew.

[56] Marilyn Monroe (in what was to be her last filmed role) was also having emotional and substance abuse problems at the time; she described Clift in a 1961 interview as "the only person I know who is in even worse shape than I am".

[63] After completing John Huston's Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), Universal Studios sued him for his frequent absences that caused the film to go over budget.

Clift countersued with the assertion that he struggled to keep up with an overwhelming volume of last-minute script revisions and that an accidental blow to both eyes on set gave him cataracts.

"[68] Elizabeth Taylor put her salary on the line as insurance in order to have Clift cast as her co-star in Reflections in a Golden Eye, to be directed by John Huston.

[70] Paramount executive Luigi Luraschi remembered that Taylor, just like many American teenagers, seemed "unmistakably in love" with Clift around the time of filming A Place in the Sun,[71] which commenced soon after that premiere outing.

In 2000, at the GLAAD Media Awards, where Taylor was honored for her work for the LGBT community, she made the first public declaration by anyone that Clift was gay and called him her closest friend and confidant.

After midnight, shortly before 1:00 a.m., James asked Clift, who was in his bed and reading a book, whether he would be interested in viewing a rebroadcast of The Misfits that was airing as a late night movie.

Concerned and unable to break the door down, James ran down to the back garden and climbed up a ladder to enter through the second-floor bedroom window.

[119] Following a 15-minute funeral at St. James' Church on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, which was attended by 150 guests, including Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, and Nancy Walker, Clift was buried in the Friends Quaker Cemetery, Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

The song alludes to his car crash and drug abuse, as well as the movies A Place in the Sun, Red River, From Here to Eternity, and The Misfits, before closing with what Rolling Stone magazine describes as "a grudging admiration that becomes unexpectedly and astonishingly moving.

Clift (portrayed by Gavin Adams) was a major supporting character in the 2020 feature film As Long As I’m Famous, which explored his intimate relationship with a young Sidney Lumet during the summer of 1948.