 LOS
ANGELES (Reuters) - Coal miner turned tough-guy actor Charles Bronson,
a star of more than 60 films including the popular "Death Wish"
series in which he played a one-man army, has died at the age of 81, a
spokeswoman said on Sunday.
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- The craggy-faced Bronson died of pneumonia on Saturday
at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, publicist Lori Jonas said.
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- The actor reportedly had Alzheimer's disease and had
been in hospital since suffering serious organ failure earlier this month.
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- Bronson was famed for his tough guy films, especially
the "Death Wish" series in which he played Paul Kersey, who was
pushed over the edge by a brutal assault on his family in the original
"Death Wish" in 1974.
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- In that film, Kersey prowled New York and meted out vigilante
justice to wrongdoers, drawing critical condemnation but enthusiastic support
from audiences.
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- Bronson told Reuters' Robert Basler in a 1985 interview
that he knew what entertained him in a film, and it was not Charles Bronson.
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- "I am not a fan of myself."
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- In that interview, Bronson was promoting "Death
Wish 3," a film he said was "nearly the same as the two Death
Wishes that came before." "Death Wish 3" was filmed several
months after New Yorker Bernard Goetz shot four men whom he said had accosted
him on a subway and found himself dubbed the "Death Wish Vigilante"
in the tabloids.
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- But Bronson says he had signed to do the picture "a
year and a half before anybody heard of Bernard Goetz" and protested
that he knew very little about the subway vigilante.
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- A COAL MINER'S SON
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- Bronson, whose original name was Charles Buchinski, was
one of 15 children of a Lithuanian coal miner in Pennsylvania. He worked
as a miner after graduating high school and it was only going into the
army during World War II that got him out of the mines. After the war he
learned acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and his first film role was in
1950 playing a sailor in "You're in the Navy Now," starring Gary
Cooper.
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- Bronson in 1972 was named the biggest box office star
by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and in 1979 he received the
Gold Star Award as the film industry's top international star.
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- In Italy, where Bronson shot many of his movies, he was
called "Il Brutto" -- "The Ugly One."
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- But his rugged appearance helped earn him applause in
such films as "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), "The Great
Escape" (1963) and "The Dirty Dozen" (1967).
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- His reputation as a quietly tough-talking hero was confirmed
in such movies as "Mr. Majestyk" (1974) and the three "Death
Wish" films.
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- "A dozen years or so ago, mine was the kind of face
nobody wanted to see in the movies," he once said.
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- "At least, not the good guy's face. But times have
changed. I seem to have the right face at the right time."
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- Frank Konisberg, who produced a Bronson film, said, "He
has a mythic American quality that somehow shines through. He's a working
class hero."
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- Bronson, called a gentle person by friends, also starred
as an Israeli general in television's "Raid on Entebbe" (1977)
and appeared in the films "Borderline" (1980), "Death Hunt"
(1981) and "From Ten to Midnight" (1982).
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- Although steadfast in his defense of action-packed, audience-pleasing
movies, Bronson expressed some frustration with his roles.
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- "I have often thought how lovely it would be,"
he once said, "to lean on a mantelpiece with a cocktail in my hand
and let the dialogue do the acting."
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- Bronson's first wife was Harriet Tendler. In 1969, he
married actress Jill Ireland, who died in 1990 after a long struggle against
breast cancer. He is survived by his third wife, Kay, and six children.
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