EXCLUSIVE: When Cary Grant met wife number four: Moment movie legend laid eyes on Dyan Cannon is recreated for new ITV series Archie

It was the moment Hollywood film legend Cary Grant first laid eyes on the woman who would become his fourth wife Dyan Cannon.

While sitting in his salon in Palm Springs, California, watching the 1961 TV series Malibu Run, the 57-year-old actor noticed a 24-year-old blonde in a pink gingham bikini.

After courting her for four years, she finally agreed to become his wife, and the couple had a daughter Jennifer in 1966. But the marriage was bitter and the couple divorced two years later.

Now a new ITV series Archie, based on Cannon’s biography ‘Dear Cary’ and Jennifer’s memoir ‘Good Stuff’, explores the relationship between the silver screen leading man and the ingénue, 33 years his junior.

The four-part series, starring Harry Potter star Jason Isaacs as Grant, and Gavin and Stacey actress Laura Aikman as Cannon, alternates scenes from Grant’s tragic childhood (his birth name was Archibald Leach) with episodes from his later life.

It contrasts the poverty of his upbringing in Bristol, after the death of his older brother John, the abandonment of his father Elias and the admission of his mother Elsie to a mental asylum, with his luxurious lifestyle in America.

By the time Cannon met Grant, he was already a major movie star, starring alongside Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief and Sophia Loren in Houseboat. Their first date was on the set of the Doris Day film That Touch of Mink.

It was a tough challenge for the 37-year-old Aikman to play someone ten years her junior and whom she had admired since her teenage years on the hit TV series Ally McBeal.

“My make-up artist Jess Bass applied this silicone-based product under my foundation, which made my skin look really clear,” she said in an exclusive interview with the Mail on Sunday.

Likewise, she had to squeeze into costumes from the 1950s and 1960s, when women were smaller. “They were quite small,” she adds.

‘I’m an avid gym goer and probably the smallest I’ve ever been.

‘But after about two months I finally made a decision. We had to have quite a few capris made because we couldn’t find any that fit. They wouldn’t even touch my ass.’

Costume designer Annie Hardinge, who worked on the Helena Bonham Carter show Nolly, provided around 50 outfits for Laura, fitting her with Cosprop and Carlo Manzi costumes.

She also created 15 of Cannon’s most iconic outfits, including the pale blue dress she wore when she first met Grant on the Universal set and the Chanel suit she wore in London in 1966.

Before her audition, Aikman watched hours of interviews with Cannon and her films and listened to her podcasts. Her favorite was the Johnny Carson Show. “As a teenager I was obsessed with Ally McBeal,” she laughs.

Then they chatted for hours. “She once FaceTimed me from her walk-in closet while she put on her knee-high boots to go to an LA Laker game,” Aikman laughs. She looked at me in a hoodie in my bed and said, “Do you like fashion Laura?”

But it was the hair and makeup that took time. “It’s the first thing I’ve worked on where the lead actor was in makeup as long as the lead actress,” smiles Aikman, who is married to actor Matt Kennard.

“Jason and I sat next to each other in the makeup chair for about two hours every morning and we played Guess That Tune while I had my wigs fitted and he had his chin prosthesis.”

How was her performance received by Cannon? “She’s very complimentary,” Aikman adds. “What she always says is, ‘Laura has my heart,’ and that’s the most important thing.”

Archie airs on ITV on Thursday (November 23).