"When you see weakness in a hero, you are doing something to his identity," he once told The Washington Post: "You take something away from the kids, the next generation, you steal away giving them anything to look up to."īronson was a coal-miner, onion picker and short-order cook before stumbling into acting after the second World War. He said he believed in his characters' basic, uncomplicated integrity and winced at more nuanced portrayals. He shunned the Hollywood party circuit, held film critics and most actors in disdain and liked to showcase himself as an antidote to the sensitive, self-doubting 1970s male. Bronson, who rose from dire poverty to become one of the world's most recognised and wealthiest stars, identified with lone-man roles. But where Callahan used one-liner "make-my-day" wit before disposing of his enemies, Bronson's characters coolly dispatched their nemeses without much talk. In reaction to tales of urban violence, "one-man wrecking crew" movies found a wide audience, most notably with Clint Eastwood as "Dirty Harry" Callahan. It was not unusual for audiences to applaud wildly as Bronson, whose characters only sought solitude, was pushed by larger forces into hunting down street punks, organised crime figures, corrupt landowners and other scum of society.
Bronson, laconic and leathery, once described himself as resembling "a rock quarry that someone has dynamited".Īn unlikely movie hero, he spent years in obscurity before becoming one of the most popular film personalities of the 1970s and 1980s in the Death Wish series and violent revenge dramas such as Mr Majestyk. He had Alzheimer's disease, and was reported to be 81.
US: Charles Bronson, the poker-faced actor who became a screen star in his 50s by playing quiet, iron-willed vigilantes with nothing to lose, has died in a Los Angeles hospital.