NAME: Charles Bronson

AGE: The count is off

NATIONALITY: American

CLAIM TO FAME: The tough guy of Hollywood

HE was a coalminer and a WWII veteran before he was lured towards acting and became famous for his tough guy roles. Charles Bronson, the rugged-faced actor who worked in more than 60 films and became a star after the popularity of the Death Wish series, passed away at 81 on August 30. He died of pneumonia and reportedly had Alzheimer’s disease.

Born Charles Buchinski, he was one of 15 children of a Lithuanian coal miner in Pennsylvania. 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. But success didn’t come his way too soon or too easy and for years Bronson played stony-faced henchmen and assorted villains. That was probably due to his rugged looks, and which earned him the title of ‘Il Brutto’, meaning ‘The ugly one’, in Italy where he made many of his movies.

“Mine was the kind of face nobody wanted to see in the movies,” he once said. “At least, not the good guy’s face. But times have changed.”

It was definitely his rugged appearance that helped earn him applause in such films as The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). His reputation as a quietly tough-talking hero was confirmed in such movies as “Mr. Majestyk” (1974) and the three “Death Wish” films.

Bronson’s career hit its peak in the 70s when he became an immensely popular star internationally, at first in European-made features. He specialized in tough action fare, and was perhaps best known as the vengeance-seeking vigilante in the Death Wish series. He made the annual exhibitors poll of Top Ten box office stars four years in a row from 1973 to 1976. His stardom petered out in the 80s, but Bronson continued to deliver his unemotive and forcefully underplayed performances in just a few appearances through the 90s.

Bronson was a working class hero who, despite international success, never won over film critics or historians the way he did fans. In 1974’s Death Wish, Bronson’s character of a stone-faced vigilante getting revenge on thugs who brutally assault his family vowed over fans in large numbers. Audiences cheered as Bronson, as a liberal architect transformed into an angel of death, who prowled New York City and meted out his own brand of justice to wrongdoers. The success of Death Wish froze Bronson’s image in the public’s mind for good. Four sequels followed, the most recent in 1994. Bronson co-starred more than a dozen times with his wife, actress Jill Ireland, who died in 1990. Despite international acclaim, Bronson once said in an interview that he never watched his films: “I’m not a fan of myself.”