Bronson, Charles

Bronson, Charles (1921-2003), American actor, born Charles Dennis Bunchinsky (also Buchinsky) in Ehrenfield, Pennsylvania, the son of Lithuanian immigrants. He began his working life as a miner, before serving in the US navy during World War II. After being demobbed he entered the theatre in Philadelphia, after which he moved to Hollywood and made his screen debut in Henry Hathaway’s You’re in the Navy Now (1951). Thereafter his blank, ruthless face and sinewy torso won him role after role as a convict, gangster, and cowboy—usually as one of the villains of the piece, such as Pittsburgh in Vera Cruz (1954).

Bronson’s big break came in 1961 with a major role in The Magnificent Seven, directed by John Sturges; this was followed almost immediately by another classic, The Great Escape (1963), which starred Steve McQueen. In 1966 he made This Property is Condemned, with Sydney Pollack, which showed that he could be versatile in characterization; but the process of stereotyping was already well advanced, and Bronson’s ironic, semi-articulate manner had become part of Hollywood lore. Attempts to break this stereotype by ridiculing it (for example, From Noon Till Three, 1976) proved completely disastrous, and Bronson was forced to bow to the inevitable. His later films cast him, like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger after him, as invulnerable, expressionless, and unbelievably savage when provoked beyond endurance, as in The Mechanic (1972), and in Death Wish (1974) and its sequels. Although Bronson’s profile dropped sharply in the 1990s and beyond, his portrayal of the depressive father in Sean Penn’s The Indian Runner (1991) proved that he was an actor of a far wider range than he generally got the opportunity to show.