Charles Bronson Bio

Out of the coal mines

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

He knew little about his father, who died when Mr. Bronson was 10. He knew abject poverty throughout his early years: his family was so poor that when he was 6 he was sent to school in a dress, a hand-me-down from an older sister.

By the time he was 16 he was working in the coal mines, earning about $1 for each ton of coal he clawed out of the earth.

He might have remained in the mines had he not been drafted to serve in World War II.

His initial assignment, in Kingman, Ariz., involved maintenance and operations of the base messes.) He was a member of the 760th Flexible Gunnery Training Squadron, not the 760th Mess Squadron. In 1945 Mr. Bronson was attached to a B-29 squadron of the 39th Bombardment Group, based in Guam, which conducted combat missions against the Japanese home islands.

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. "I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited," he observed.

"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."
'Bronson' came from studio gate

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 was so popular that it spawned four sequels, in 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1994.

His other notable movies include "Telefon" and "The Valachi Papers."

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."

His craggy looks were duly noted by Europeans. The French knew him as "le sacre monstre" (the sacred monster) and the Italians called him "Il Brutto" (the ugly man).

Bronson was well aware of not fitting in, and in a 1971 interview, he pondered his difficulty in becoming a star.

"Maybe I'm too masculine. Casting directors cast in their own, or an idealized image. Maybe I don't look like anybody's ideal."