Biography of Charlton Heston :-Tall and muscular, with a great physical presence, prominent jaw and patrician factions that suggested intelligence and seriousness, his first roles were hard and soon became the typical epic hero of Hollywood, playing great characters like Moses or Michelangelo In a succession of overproductions.
Biography of Charlton Heston
- Born:- 4 October 1923, Evanston, Illinois, United States
- Died:- 5 April 2008, Beverly Hills, California, United States
- Height:- 1.91 m
- Spouse:- Lydia Clarke (m. 1944–2008)
- Children:- Fraser Clarke Heston, Holly Ann Heston
His humble background did not stop him from going to college and studying drama at Northwestern University. His theatrical formation before going to the cinema was one hundred percent Shakespearean.
See Also: Biography of Gerard Depardieu
After his years of university he worked in radio and theater, at which point he was surprised by World War II. It was destined to the Aleutian Islands and served in the air force.
After his return to civilian life, he made his acting debut as a minor actor, and in his first appearance on Broadway he integrated the cast of Anthony and Cleopatra in 1947.
It was then, with the stage name of Charlton Heston, that it became popular Thanks to a succession of television specials, in which it represented historical roles.
This and other performances made Paramount decide to hire him and include him in the cast of Wiliam Dieterle’s City in Shadows (1950), which should be considered as his commercial movie debut.
The director Cecil B. de Mille soon noticed the young actor, whom he considered very photogenic, with an epic air and very respectful of the indications that were given. In this way he was integrated in movies of high budget and great reception in the box office, like the greater spectacle of the world (1952), of the own one of Mille, in which it intervened like director of track of the circus.
Two years later he achieved a remarkable recognition with his performance in an acceptable adventure film, When Byron Haskin’s Marabunta roars , which also introduced a clever erotic content in a more or less subliminal way.
In 1956, from his role of Moses in The Ten Commandments , he became part of Hollywood stardom. The opportunity came from the hand of Cecil B. de Mille, who filmed his second version on the subject and that turned the film into a mastodontic production, both for its cast as for its scenarios.
Heston was the great protagonist and from that moment it can be said that it entered the circle of the greats, in which it knew to maintain itself.
In addition to the repercussions of his image, Heston has been an actor who has known perfectly the ins and outs of cinema and has been able to distinguish art from bad cinema.
He showed this when, thanks to him, Orson Welles was able to finish his police detective Sed de mal (1958), with Heston becoming a Mexican police officer who confronts the American inspector who was incarnating Welles himself.
At the end of the fifties, William Wyler gave him another of the transcendental roles of his career. Heston was Judah Ben-Hur, in the second adaptation of the novel written by General Lewis Wallace.
Ben-Hur is another big-screen film with excellent cinematic moments and has won the biggest prize crop of the Academy of Cinema, including the best actor for Charlton Heston.
The producer Samuel Bronston, who for several years turned the environs of Madrid into a small Hollywood (and took advantage of the propaganda coverage offered him and the low costs of the productions in Spain for the American capital), called him to star in El Cid (1961), directed by Anthony Mann, an adaptation to the American conceptions of the adventures of the Castilian hero that , although conceived with technique of western, did not lack of certain dignity.
For the same producer will work two years later in 55 days in Beijing (1963), in a film signed by Nicholas Ray.
Another of the actor’s highlights was his role as the astronaut Taylor in Franklin J. Schaffner’s The Planet of the Apes (1967), which was the beginning of a series of films on the subject (of which the best was this ), And which became a point of reference for the science fiction cinema of modern cinema.
Schaffner, who two years before had filmed with him an excellent work on the Middle Ages, The Lord of War (1965), was delighted with the work of the actor.
Heston also dedicated himself to management. His career in this area was not as brilliant as that of actor, although he was able to show in his few interventions as director that his approaches were ambitious from the cultural point of view and, although he was irregular, he did not fail to demonstrate that he knew Cinematographic language His films as director include Marco Antonio and Cleopatra (1973) , shot in Spain with very little budget, and the adventure film titled Desafío en los profundidades (1982).
His private life was remarkably quiet compared to the promiscuous Hollywood mood; Only married once, and the couple he forms with his wife is emblematic precisely because of his fidelity.
His son Fraser has also been dedicated to the cinema, but with much less resonance than his father.
Charlton Heston was one of the actors that best knew to incarnate in the cinema the concept of the hero.
He made the best possible play for an excellent physicist, and also provided an interpretive style that, although limited, suited the type of roles he represented and which gave him popularity. No one like him played the historical roles, which he endowed with a special aura.
