Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone, London,He was named after his father's brother, Alfred. His family was mostly Roman Catholic, with his mother and paternal grandmother being of Irish extraction. Hitchcock was sent to the Jesuit Classic school St Lgnatius' College in Sramford Hill, London. He often described his childhood as being very lonely and sheltered, a situation compounded by his obesity.Hitchcock said he was sent by his father on numerous occasions to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for ten minutes as punishment for behaving badly. This idea of being harshly treated or wrongfully accused is frequently reflected in Hitchcock's films.

Hitchcock's mother would often make him address her while standing at the foot of her bed, especially if he behaved badly, forcing him to stand there for hours. These experiences would later be used for the portrayal of the character of Norman Bates in his movie Psycho.Hitchcock's father died when he was 14. In the same year, Hitchcock left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London. After graduating, he became adraftsman and advertising designer with a cable company.

During this period, Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film production in London, working as a title-card designer for the London branch of what would become Paramount Pictures In 1920, he received a full-time position at Islington Studios with its American owner,Famous Players-Lasky and their British successor, Gainsborough Pictures, designing the titles for silent movies. His rise from title designer to film director took five years.

n 1929, Hitchcock began work on his tenth film Blackmail. While the film was still in production, the studio, British International Pictures (BIP), decided to make it one of the UK's first sound pictures. With the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum, Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences. In the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies, Hitchcock had explained how he used early sound recording as a special element of the film, emphasizing the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman suspected of murder. During this period, Hitchcock directed segments for a BIP musical film revue Elstree Calling (1930) and directed a short film featuring twoFilm Weekly scholarship winners, An Elastic Affair (1930). Another BIP musical revue, Harmony Heaven (1929), reportedly had minor input from Hitchcock, but his name does not appear in the credits.

In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon. at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success and his second, The 39 Steps (1935), is often considered one of the best films from his early period. By 1938, Hitchcock had become known for his observation, "Actors are cattle".^[ He once said that he first made this remark as early as the late 1920s, in connection to stage actors who were snobbish about motion pictures