There was, from the start, something monumental, something reminiscent of Mount Rushmore, about Heston with his 6ft 3in height and chiselled features. He could be angry, threatening and cruel, but he couldn't be commonplace, diffident or funny. In a 1960 article in Cahiers du cinéma called "In Defence of Violence", French critic Michel Mourlet made this celebrated claim: "Charlton Heston is an axiom. He constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any film being enough to instil beauty. The pent-up violence expressed by the sombre phosphorescence of his eyes, his eagle's profile, the imperious arch of his eyebrows, the hard, bitter curve of his lips, the stupendous strength of his torso - this is what he has been given and what not even the worst of directors can debase."
By that point in his career, the Midwestern-born Heston had gone in nine years from unknown stage and TV actor to Oscar-winning star of Ben-Hur (1959). Arriving on the Paramount lot to make his debut as a gambler in the noir melodrama Dark City (1950), he was spotted by Cecil B DeMille, who cast him as the circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and then, because of his resemblance to Michelangelo's Moses, gave him the lead in The Ten Commandments (1956). "I have a face that belongs in another century," Heston observed.
Chainmail, a toga or a military uniform were more his style than two-piece suits. His only memorable contemporary role was in 1958 as the decent Mexican cop opposing corrupt American detective Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil (and his chief contribution was his insistence that Welles be director). His single memorable performance as an ordinary human being was as an illiterate cowboy in Tom Gries's Will Penny (1968), which he regarded as the best film he'd been in.
Otherwise, he mostly played towering figures: the Spanish liberator in El Cid (1961), John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), General Gordon in Khartoum (1966) and (his most undervalued movie) the knight exercising droit de seigneur in medieval Normandy in The War Lord (1965). Alongside the historic performances, he made a string of first-rate westerns (The Big Country, Major Dundee) and several notable science fiction movies. In the most notable of the sci-fi movies, Planet of the Apes (1968), playing the astronaut going through a time warp, he got the best laugh of his career when he gave Kim Hunter, his sympathetic monkey captor, a farewell kiss. She winces, saying: "God, but you're ugly!"
From the mid-1970s, Heston worked mainly in supporting roles in movies while appearing on stage in Shakespeare and A Man for All Seasons (his favourite modern play). Married for 64 years to the same woman, he lived a quiet life, obsessed with social stability. Having once been a leading liberal and outspoken supporter of civil rights, he became disgusted by the permissive society and became an outspoken supporter of the Republican party and vociferous spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
School days He attended the same high school in Winnetka, Illinois, as Donald Rumsfeld and made his film debut at 17 in a silent amateur version of Peer Gynt (1941).
Heston on his career "I've played three presidents, three saints and two geniuses - and that's probably enough for any man."
Essential DVDs The Ten Commandments, A Touch of Evil, The Big Country, Ben-Hur, El Cid, Major Dundee, The War Lord, Will Penny, Planet of the Apes
