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Charles Bronson dies at 81

Film, TV actor won fame with 'Death Wish' movies
Sunday, August 31, 2003

(CNN) -- Actor Charles Bronson, perhaps best known for his "Death Wish" films, has died in Los Angeles, California, his publicist said. He was 81.

Bronson had been battling pneumonia for the past four weeks, publicist Lori Jonas said. He died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with his wife, Kim Weeks, by his side.

"He was 81, a loving husband, father and grandfather," Jonas said.

He was born Charles Buchinsky in 1921 in the southwestern Pennsylvania town of Ehrenfeld, the 11th of 15 children of Lithuanian immigrant parents.

As a youth he worked as a coal miner like his father and might have remained in the mines had he not been drafted to serve in World War II.

After the war he went to work for a Philadelphia theater company, intending to become a set designer. Instead he switched to roles onstage.

Bronson moved into films in the 1950s, with a memorable role as Bernardo O'Reilly in 1960's "The Magnificent Seven."

He followed that up with roles in films like 1962's "Kid Galahad" with Elvis Presley, 1963's "The Great Escape" and "The Dirty Dozen" in 1967.

That success was followed by nearly a decade acting in French and Italian films, where his role in 1968's "Once Upon a Time in the West" established him as a star.

He won a 1970 Golden Globe for his role in "Rider on the Rain."

With a craggy face that could resemble some of the Monument Valley locations in "Once Upon a Time," Bronson was typecast in action films. As he put it: "I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited.

"I don't look like someone who leans on a mantelpiece with a cocktail in my hand, you know," he said another time. "I look like the kind of guy who has a bottle of beer in my hand."

He took the name "Bronson" from the Bronson Gate at Paramount Studios in Hollywood at the north end of Bronson Avenue.

His first movie using the name "Charles Bronson" was the 1954 Western "Drum Beat," with Alan Ladd.

As the Westerns went out of style, Bronson moved to violent thrillers such as "Murphy's Law," but 1974 saw him cast as his most famous character: an angry, vigilante widower out for revenge in "Death Wish."

Bronson played Paul Kersey, a New York architect whose wife is killed and daughter is raped. The film were so popular that it spawned four sequels, in 1982, 1985, 1987, and 1994.

Bronson shared the screen many times with his second wife, Jill Ireland, who died in 1990. The actor continued to work well into his 70s but found challenging work difficult to find.

"It depends on the script," he once said. "They keep sending them, and I keep turning them down."

Funeral services will be private, Jonas said.

Along with Weeks, six children survive Bronson: Suzanne, Tony, Katrina, Zulieka, Paul and Val.