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 when Hollywood screen legend Cary Grant first set eyes on the woman who would become his fourth wife Dyan Cannon.

As he sat in his drawing room in Palm Springs, California, watching the 1961 TV series Malibu Run, the 57-year-old actor, spotted a 24-year-old blonde in a pink gingham bikini.

Having wooed her for four years, she finally agreed to become his wife, and the couple went on to have a daughter Jennifer, in 1966. But the marriage was acrimonious and the couple were 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 silver screen’s leading man and the ingénue 33 years his junior.

Starring Harry Potter star Jason Isaacs as Grant, and Gavin and Stacey actress Laura Aikman as Cannon, the four-part series intersperses 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 his mother Elsie’s committal in a mental asylum, with his luxurious lifestyle in America.

By the time Cannon met Grant, he was already a major movie star, having appeared 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 Aikman, 37, to play someone a decade younger than her, whom she had admired since she was a teenager in the hit TV series Ally McBeal.

‘My make-up artist Jess Bass would put this silicon-based product on underneath my foundation which made my skin look really clear,’ she said in an exclusive interview with the Mail on Sunday.

Equally, she had to squeeze into costumes from the 1950s and 1960s, when women were more petite. ‘They were quite tiny,’ she adds.

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

‘But I did pop a button about two months in. We had to have quite a few pairs of capris made because we couldn’t find any that fit. They would not even go over my bum.’

Costume designer Annie Hardinge, who worked on the Helena Bonham Carter show Nolly, sourced approximately 50 outfits for Laura, fitting her at costumiers Cosprop and Carlo Manzi.

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

Before her audition, Aikman watched hours of interviews with Cannon, her films, and listened to her podcasts. Her favourite was the Johnny Carson Show. ‘I was obsessed with Ally McBeal as a teenager,’ she smiles.

Afterwards they spent hours chatting. ‘She once Face-timed me from her walk-in wardrobe while she was putting on her knee-high boots to go to a LA Laker’s game,’ laughs Aikman. She looked at me in a hoody in my bed and went: “Do you like fashion Laura?”‘

But it was the hair and make-up which took time. ‘It’s the first thing I have worked on where the lead actor was in make-up as long as the lead actress,’ smiles Aikman, who is married to actor Matt Kennard.

‘Jason and I would be next to each other in the make-up chair for about two hours every morning and we used to play Guess That Tune while I had my wigs fitted and he had his prosthetic chin.’

So, how was her performance received by Cannon? ‘She’s very complimentary,’ adds Aikman. ‘The thing she always says is “Laura got my heart,” which is the important thing.’

Archie is screened on ITV on Thursday (November 23).