Remembering Action & Western Star Charles Bronson

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, Charles Bronson, 1960 custom graphic — Everett Collection

Charles Bronson, who passed away on August 30, 2003, at the age of 81, was one of 20th century cinema’s most legendary tough guys. Though he is perhaps best remembered for 1974’s Death Wish, in which he played a grieving architect turned vigilante, a role that channeled the era’s anxieties about crime, Bronson had a long career that spanned not just the decades, but also a far longer range of roles than you might imagine.

Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, on November 3, 1921, the 11th of 15 children of immigrant coal miners. Bronson didn’t just grow up in a mining town called Scooptown; by age 16, he had followed his brothers into the coal mines, earning about $1 per ton of coal.

In 1943, Bronson enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces. After the war, he pursued acting in Philadelphia and later at the Pasadena Playhouse, and by 1951 he had made his film debut (as Charles Buchinsky) in You’re in the Navy Now. He spent the 1950s in tough supporting roles, changing his name to Bronson in 1954, and eventually landed his first starring turn in 1958’s crime drama Machine-Gun Kelly.

THE GREAT ESCAPE, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, 1963

Everett Collection

In the 1960s, Bronson was often cast in gritty ensemble hits like The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen. He broke through abroad when he co-starred with Alain Delon in Adieu l’Ami in 1968, followed by Sergio Leone casting him as the mysterious drifter in Once Upon a Time in the West. Those films made him a star in Europe, earning him a Golden Globe in 1972 as a “world film favorite.”

By the early 1970s, Bronson had become one of the world’s highest-paid actors, and reached his greatest fame with Death Wish. It spawned three sequels, cementing Bronson’s image as cinema’s ultimate action hero. In later years, he continued in similar roles in films like Mr. Majestyk and Hard Times, while also giving quietly powerful dramatic turns such as in Sean Penn‘s The Indian Runner in 1991.

Everett Collection

Off-screen, Bronson was a private, family-oriented man. He married actress Harriett Tendler in 1949, and they had two children before divorcing in 1965. In 1968, he married English actress Jill Ireland, and together they created a blended family with seven children in total. They split their time between Los Angeles and a Vermont farm to keep family life central. Ireland died of cancer in 1990. Bronson passed away on August 30, 2003, at age 81.