Biography
Early career
Heston was born John Charles Carter in Evanston, Illinois to Lilla Charlton and Russell Whitford Carter. When he was 10 his parents divorced. Some years later, his mother married Chester Heston. The new family moved to well-off Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, Illinois, where young Heston (his new name) attended New Trier High School. He enrolled in the school's drama program, where he performed with such outstanding results that he earned a drama scholarship to Northwestern University from the local community theatre in which he was also active. While still in high school, he played in the silent 16mm amateur film adaptation of Peer Gynt made by David Bradley. Several years later the same team produced Julius Caesar, in which Heston played Marc Antony.
In 1944, Heston left college and enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces. He served for three years as a B-25 radio operater/gunner stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the Eleventh Air Force, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant.
While in the service, he married fellow Northwestern student Lydia Marie Clarke in 1944. After the war, the two lived in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, where they worked as models. Seeking a way to make it in theater, they decided to manage a playhouse in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1947, they went back to New York where Heston was offered a supporting role in the Broadway play Antony and Cleopatra, starring the legendary Katherine Cornell, for which he earned acclaim. He also had success in television, playing a number of roles in CBS's Studio One, one of the most popular anthology dramas of the 1950s.
Film career
In 1950, he earned recognition for his appearance in his first professional movie, Dark City. His breakthrough came in 1952 with his role of a circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth. But the muscular, 6'3", square jawed Heston became an icon by portraying Moses in The Ten Commandments, a part he was chosen for reportedly because director Cecil B. DeMille thought that he bore an uncanny resemblance to the statue of Moses by Michaelangelo. He has played leading roles in a number of fictional and historical epics—such as Ben-Hur, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, and Khartoum—during his long career. He once quipped, "They seem to think I have a Medieval face!" He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1959 performance in the title role of Ben-Hur, one of a record-setting 11 earned by that film.
Heston also starred in various science fiction films and disaster movies, some of which, like Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, Earthquake, and The Omega Man, which were hugely successful at the time of their release and have since become cult classics.
Heston fought at times for his artistic choices. In 1958, he maneuvered Universal International into allowing Orson Welles to direct him in Touch of Evil, and in 1965 he fought the studio in support of Sam Peckinpah, when an attempt was made to interfere with his direction of Major Dundee, despite the fact that Peckinpah was so temperamental that at one point the normally even-keeled Heston found himself threatening the diminuitive director with his cavalry sabre when he felt that Peckinpah was mistreating his cast. Heston was also president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1966 to 1971.
In 1971 he made his directorial debut with Antony and Cleopatra, an adaptation of the William Shakespeare play that he had performed during his earlier theater career.
Starting with 1973's The Three Musketeers, Heston began playing an increasing number of supporting roles and cameos. Despite this, his immense popularity has never died, and he has seen a steady stream of film and television roles ever since. Heston has an instantly recognizable voice, and is often heard as a narrator.
Off screen
Heston was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998, it went into remission the next year following a course of radiation treatment. In August 2002, Heston publicly announced that he was diagnosed as suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In July 2003, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, from President George W. Bush at the White House. In March 2005, various newspapers reported that family and friends of Heston were apparently shocked by the rapid progression of his illness, and that he is sometimes unable to get out of bed.
Political beliefs
In his earlier years, Heston was a Democrat, campaiging for Presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. He was also a civil rights activist long before it became fashionable for other celebrities to do so, accompanying Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963. In 1969 Heston was asked by some Democrats to run for the California State Senate, a move that would have likely had bipartisan support in the state. He declined because he wanted to continue acting.
In the 1980s, however, Heston began to support more conservative and libertarian positions on such issues as affirmative action and gun rights. He has campaigned for Republican candidates and Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Heston giving his infamous speech, when responding to opposition to the Right to Bear Arms, he proclaimed they would have to "pry it from my cold, dead hands".
He is an honorary life member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and was its president and spokesman from 1998 until his resignation in 2003. As NRA president he is perhaps best known, while raising an antique Sharps Rifle over his head at the 2000 NRA convention, for saying that Al Gore would take away his Second Amendment rights "from my cold, dead hands". (In announcing his resignation in 2003, he would again raise a rifle over his head, this time repeating only the famous five words of his 2000 speech.) Heston has been harshly criticized by opponents of gun rights. Michael Moore interviewed Heston in his home in the 2002 documentary film Bowling for Columbine asking questions of him regarding NRA meetings being held in Littleton, Colorado, shortly after the Columbine shootings and in Flint, Michigan, shortly after the very publicized shooting and death of a 6-year old named Kayla Rowland in her first grade classroom. In Littleton, Colorado, many of the festivities and activities of the convention were cancelled; an annual meeting was still held in compliance with NRA bylaws, much to the shock of the Littleton community. Those who know Heston or are close to him have defended him and his right to express his beliefs, and insist that he is not the monster that so many have made him out to be.
According to his autobiography In the Arena, Heston also recognised the freedom of speech of others and the First Amendment. He is also an opponent of McCarthyism and racial segregation, which he sees as only helping the cause of Communism worldwide. He was opposed to the Vietnam War and considered Richard Nixon a disaster for America.
He is also an opponent of abortion and gave the introduction to a pro-life documentary by Bernard Nathanson called "Eclipse of Reason" which focuses on late-term abortions. Heston also served on the Advisory Board of Accuracy in Media (AIM), a conservative media watchdog group founded by the late Reed Irvine.
Trivia
In Greece, his name is written as "Charlton Easton" because "Heston" has scatological connotations in Greek. He was unable to use his birth name, John Carter, as an actor because it bore too close a resemblance to the name of the hero in Edgar Rice Burroughs' first novel A Princess of Mars, which was in development at the time although the production fell through. Many producers have tried to film this novel and the series of books following it over the years, but none have yet suceeded. A current production, ironically titled John Carter of Mars, however, is well underway.
Heston's portrayal of Buffalo Bill in Pony Express, an uninspired Western from early in his career, inspired the Bills, a Congolese youth cult who idolized Western movies.
Books
Heston has written several books, including autobiographies and religious books:
The Actor's Life (ISBN 0671830163)
In the Arena: An Autobiography (ISBN 157297267X)
Beijing Diary (ISBN 0671687069)
To Be a Man: Letters to My Grandson (ISBN 0743213114)
Charlton Heston Presents the Bible (ISBN 1577192702)
Charlton Heston's Hollywood: 50 Years in American Film with Jean-Pierre Isbouts (ISBN 1577193571)
Filmography
Dark City (1950) with Lizabeth Scott – Heston's first movie
Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Heston's first Blockbuster
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Papa Rua Alguem 5555 (2002)
The Order (2001)
Town & Country (2001)
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Any Given Sunday (1999)
Gideon (1999)
Armageddon (film) (1998)
Hamlet (1996)
Alaska (1996)
In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
True Lies (1994) (uncredited)
Tombstone (1993)
Wayne's World 2 (1993)
Symphony for the Spire (1992)
Solar Crisis (1990)
The Little Kidnappers (1990) (TV)
Call from Space (1989) (voice)
Treasure Island (1989)
A Man for All Seasons (1988)
Christmas Night with the Two Ronnies (1987) (TV)
Proud Men (1987) (TV)
The Colbys (1985) TV Series (1985-1987) (TV)
Nairobi Affair (1984) (TV)
Chiefs (1983) (mini) TV Series
Mother Lode (1982)
The Awakening (1980)
The Mountain Men (1980)
Gray Lady Down (1978)
Crossed Swords (1978)
Midway (1976)
Two Minute Warning (1976)
The Last Hard Men (1976)
The Four Musketeers (1974)
Earthquake (1974)
Airport 1975 (1974)
The Three Musketeers (1973)
Soylent Green (1973)
Antony and Cleopatra (1973)
Call of the Wild (1972)
Skyjacked (1972)
The London Brige Special (1972)
The Omega Man (1971)
Julius Caesar (1970)
The Hawaiians (1970)
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Number One (1969)
Will Penny (1968)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Counterpoint (1968)
Khartoum (1966)
The War Lord (1965)
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
Major Dundee (1965)
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
55 Days at Peking (1963)
Diamond Head (1963)
The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962)
El Cid (1961)
Ben-Hur (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Buccaneer (1958)
The Big Country (1958)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Three Violent People (1957)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Lucy Gallant (1955)
The Private War of Major Benson (1955)
The Far Horizons (1955)
The Secret of the Incas (1954)
The Naked Jungle (1954)
Bad for Each Other (1953)
Arrowhead (1953)
Pony Express (1953)
The President's Lady (1953)
Ruby Gentry (1952)
The Savage (1952)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Dark City (1950)
