Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor. He became famous for his main roles in many Hollywood movies, such as biblical stories, historical dramas, science-fiction films, and action films. He won an Academy Award, a David di Donatello Award, a Laurel Award, a Photoplay Award, a Golden Globe Award (plus three other nominations), and was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards. He received many special honors, including a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star in 1960, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1967, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1971, an honorary Saturn Award in 1975, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 1978, the ShoWest Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003.
Heston became famous for his main roles as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956) and as the main character in Ben-Hur (1959), which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. His other well-known movies include The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Secret of the Incas (1954), Touch of Evil (1958), The Big Country (1958), El Cid (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Khartoum (1966), Planet of the Apes (1968), Julius Caesar (1970), The Omega Man (1971), Antony and Cleopatra (1972), Soylent Green (1973), The Three Musketeers (1974), Airport 1975 (1974), Earthquake (1974), and Crossed Swords (1978). Later, he acted in Mother Lode (1982), Tombstone (1993), True Lies (1994), Alaska (1996), and Hamlet (1996).
In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was one of a few Hollywood actors who publicly opposed racism and supported the civil rights movement. In 1987, Heston left the Democratic Party and became a Republican, starting a conservative political group and supporting Ronald Reagan. He was president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) for five terms, from 1998 to 2003. After announcing he had Alzheimer’s disease in 2002, he stopped acting and left the NRA presidency.
Early life
John Charles Carter was born on October 4, 1923, in Cook County, Illinois, to Lilla (born Baines in 1899, died 1994) and Russell Whitford Carter (born 1897, died 1966), who worked at a sawmill. His autobiography says he was born in Wilmette, Illinois, but most sources say Evanston, Illinois. His birth certificate, registered when he was 11 days old, lists his name as Charlton Carter and records his birthplace as Evanston.
Heston said in a 1995 interview that he had trouble remembering his early childhood or addresses. He had some Scottish heritage, including from the Clan Fraser, but most of his ancestry was English. His earliest ancestors from England arrived in America in the 1600s. His maternal great-grandparents, William Charlton from Sunderland, England, and Mary Drysdale Charlton from Scotland, moved to Canada. His grandmother, Marian Emily Charlton, was born in Canada in 1872. In his autobiography, Heston wrote that his father worked in the family’s construction business. When Heston was an infant, his father’s job moved the family to St. Helen, Michigan, a quiet, forested area. Heston lived a peaceful but remote life, spending time hunting and fishing in the woods.
When Heston was ten years old, his parents divorced after having three children. Soon after, his mother remarried, and Heston, along with his younger sister Lilla and brother Alan, moved to Wilmette. Heston and his siblings took their mother’s new husband’s last name. The three children attended New Trier High School, which later became the school attended by Rock Hudson and Ann-Margret. Heston recalled, “All kids play pretend games, but I did it more than most. Even when we moved to Chicago, I was more or less a loner. We lived in a North Shore suburb, where I was a skinny hick from the woods, and all the other kids seemed to be rich and know about girls.”
There are contradictions about when “Charlton” became Heston’s first name. His birth certificate lists his name as Charlton Carter, and the 1930 U.S. census record for Richfield, Michigan, shows him as Charlton J. Carter at age six. Later records and movie studio biographies say he was born John Charles Carter. When Russell Carter died in 1966, Heston’s brother and sister changed their surname to Heston the following year, but Heston did not.
“Charlton” was the maiden name of Heston’s maternal grandmother, Marian, not his mother, Lilla. This is different from how 20th-century references describe it and what Heston said. When Marian (born Charlton) and her husband, Charles Baines, separated in the early 1900s, Marian married William Henry Lawton in 1907. Heston’s mother, Lilla, and her sister May were adopted by their maternal grandfather and changed their last name to Charlton to distance themselves from their biological father, Charles Baines, who was not a good influence. The Carters divorced in 1933, and Lilla married Chester Heston. Mrs. Heston wanted her children to use her last name, so Heston became Charlton Heston. He appeared in his first film with his brother Alan Carter in a small role in Peer Gynt (1941). His nickname was always Chuck.
Heston often said he spent time in the forest as a child, pretending to be characters from books. Later, in high school, he joined New Trier’s drama program and played the lead in a silent film adaptation of Peer Gynt by future film activist David Bradley, released in 1941. Through the Winnetka Community Theatre, he earned a drama scholarship to Northwestern University. He attended college from 1941 to 1943, studying under Alvina Krause, but left without earning a degree. Years later, he worked with Bradley to produce the first sound version of Julius Caesar, in which Heston played Mark Antony.
In March 1944, Heston married Lydia Marie Clarke at Grace Methodist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. That same year, he joined the military. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces and served two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner on a B-25 Mitchell bomber stationed in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands with the 77th Bombardment Squadron of the Eleventh Air Force. He reached the rank of staff sergeant.
After becoming famous, Heston narrated classified U.S. military and Department of Energy films about nuclear weapons. For six years, Heston held the nation’s highest security clearance, called a Q clearance, which is similar to a top-secret clearance from the Department of Defense.
Career
After the war, the Hestons lived in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, where they worked as artists' models. To find success in theater, they decided to manage a playhouse in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1947, earning $100 a week (about $1,400 in 2025). In 1948, they returned to New York, where Heston was offered a supporting role in a Broadway revival of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, starring Katharine Cornell. In television, Heston played several roles in CBS's Studio One, one of the most popular anthology dramas of the 1950s. In 1949, Heston played Mark Antony in an independent film adaptation of Julius Caesar (1950). Film producer Hal B. Wallis saw Heston in a 1950 television production of Wuthering Heights and offered him a contract. When his wife reminded Heston they had decided to focus on theater and television, he replied, "Well, maybe just for one film to see what it's like."
Heston's first professional movie role was the leading part at age 26 in Dark City, a 1950 film noir produced by Hal Wallis. His breakthrough came when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as a circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth, which was named the Best Picture of 1952 by the Motion Picture Academy. It was also the most popular movie of that year. King Vidor used Heston in a melodrama with Jennifer Jones, Ruby Gentry (1952). He followed it with a Western at Paramount, The Savage (1952), playing a white man raised by Indians. 20th Century Fox used him to play Andrew Jackson in The President's Lady (1953) opposite Susan Hayward. Back at Paramount, Heston was Buffalo Bill in Pony Express (1953). He followed this with another Western, Arrowhead (1953).
In 1953, Heston was Billy Wilder's first choice to play Sefton in Stalag 17. However, the role was given to William Holden, who won an Oscar for it. Hal Wallis reunited Heston with Lizabeth Scott in a melodrama, Bad for Each Other (1953). In 1954, he made two adventure films for Paramount Pictures. The Naked Jungle had Heston battle a plague of killer ants. He played the lead in Secret of the Incas, which was shot on location at the archaeological site Machu Picchu and has many similarities to Raiders of the Lost Ark, which appeared 25 years later. Heston played the explorer William Clark in The Far Horizons (1955) with Fred MacMurray as Meriwether Lewis. Heston tried a comedy, The Private War of Major Benson (1955), at Universal, then supported Jane Wyman in a drama, Lucy Gallant (1955).
Heston played Moses in the highly successful biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956), chosen by director Cecil B. DeMille, who thought Heston looked like Michelangelo's statue of Moses. DeMille cast Heston's three-month-old son, Fraser Clarke Heston, as the infant Moses. The Ten Commandments became one of the greatest box office successes of all time and is the eighth-highest-grossing film adjusted for inflation. His portrayal of the Hebrew prophet was praised by critics. The Hollywood Reporter described him as "splendid, handsome, and princely in scenes as a young man, and majestic and terrible as his role demands." The New York Daily News wrote that Heston "is remarkably effective as both the young, princely Moses and as the Patriarchal savior of his people." His performance earned him his first Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama and Spain's Fotogramas de Plata Award for Best Foreign Performer. When the Egyptian Theater reopened in December 1998, it screened Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 original The Ten Commandments, which had premiered there 75 years earlier. Charlton and Lydia Heston were honored guests at this event and sat with their longtime friends, brothers Charles Elias Disney and Daniel H. Disney.
Heston returned to Westerns with Three Violent People (1957). Universal tried to interest him in a thriller starring Orson Welles, Touch of Evil; Heston agreed to be in it if Welles directed. The film is now considered a masterpiece. He also played a supporting role in William Wyler's The Big Country opposite Gregory Peck and Burl Ives. Heston had another chance to play Andrew Jackson in The Buccaneer (1958), produced by DeMille and starring Yul Brynner.
After Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, and Rock Hudson turned down the title role in Ben-Hur (1959), Heston accepted the role, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film earned 11 Oscars. After Moses and Ben-Hur, Heston became more associated with Biblical epics than any other actor. He later voiced Ben-Hur in an animated television production of the Lew Wallace novel in 2003. Heston followed it with The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), co-starring Gary Cooper, which was a box office disappointment.
Heston turned down the lead opposite Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love to appear in Benn W. Levy's play The Tumbler, directed by Laurence Olivier. Called a "harrowingly pretentious verse drama" by Time, the production had a troubled out-of-town tryout in Boston and closed after five performances on Broadway in February 1960. Heston, a great admirer of Olivier, took on the play to work with him as a director. After the play flopped, Heston told columnist Joe Hyams, "I feel I am the only one who came out with a profit. … I got out of it precisely what I went in for—a chance to work with Olivier. I learned from him in six weeks things I never would have learned otherwise. I think I've ended up a better actor."
Heston enjoyed acting on stage, believing it revivified him as an actor. He never returned to Broadway but acted in regional theaters. His most frequent stage roles included the title role in Macbeth, and Mark Antony in both Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. Heston considered himself a Shakespearean actor and collected significant works by and about William Shakespeare. He played Sir Thomas More in *A
Acting credits and accolades
Richard Corliss wrote in Time magazine, "From start to finish, Heston was a grand, old-fashioned person who did not fit well in modern times. He was a strong and powerful figure who reminded people of a time when Hollywood took its work seriously, when heroes came from history books, not comic books. Movies like Ben-Hur or El Cid could not be made today, partly because popular culture has changed as much as political fashion. But mainly because there is no one like Charlton Heston to give these kinds of movies their strength, energy, and courage." In his obituary for the actor, film critic Roger Ebert noted, "Heston made at least three movies that almost everyone eventually sees: Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, and Planet of the Apes." Heston's cinematic legacy was the subject of Cinematic Atlas: The Triumphs of Charlton Heston, an 11-film collection by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center that was shown at the Walter Reade Theatre from August 29 to September 4, 2008.
On April 17, 2010, Heston was added to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum's Hall of Great Western Performers. In his childhood hometown of St. Helen, Michigan, a charter school named Charlton Heston Academy opened on September 4, 2012. It is located in the former St. Helen Elementary School. On the first day, 220 students in grades kindergarten through eighth attended.
Charlton Heston was honored on a United States postage stamp released on April 11, 2014. He was inducted as a Laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and received the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by Illinois Governor James R. Thompson in 1977 for contributions to Performing Arts.
Political views
Heston's political activism had four stages:
In the first stage, from 1955 to 1961, he supported liberal Democratic candidates for president and signed petitions for liberal political causes.
From 1961 to 1972, he continued to support Democratic presidential candidates. He became nationally known in 1963 for supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964. From 1965 to 1971, he was the elected president of the Screen Actors Guild and had disagreements with his liberal rival, Ed Asner. In 1968, he supported the Gun Control Act of 1968 alongside other Hollywood stars.
The third stage began in 1972. Heston rejected the liberalism of George McGovern and supported Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. In the 1980s, he strongly supported Republican president Ronald Reagan.
In 1995, Heston started his fourth stage by creating his own political action fund-raising committee and became involved in the National Rifle Association (NRA). He gave speeches and interviews defending conservative views, and he criticized media and academia for supporting affirmative action, which he believed was unfair reverse discrimination.
Heston campaigned for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1956 but could not campaign for John F. Kennedy in 1960 because he was filming El Cid in Spain. In 1961, he joined a picket line outside a segregated Oklahoma movie theater showing El Cid. He later described traveling to Oklahoma City to protest segregated restaurants, which upset the movie’s producers. In 1963, he attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with Martin Luther King Jr. He later said he supported the civil rights movement "long before Hollywood found it fashionable."
In the 1964 election, he supported Lyndon B. Johnson, who helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That year, he opposed California Proposition 14, which aimed to repeal the state’s fair housing law.
Heston opposed the Vietnam War (though he later changed his opinion) and was asked by the Democratic Party in 1969 to run for the U.S. Senate against George Murphy. He decided not to run, saying he could not give up acting. He supported Richard Nixon in 1972, though Nixon is not mentioned in his autobiography.
In his 1995 autobiography, In the Arena, Heston wrote that in 1964, while driving back from the set of The War Lord, he saw a "Barry Goldwater for President" billboard with the slogan "In Your Heart You Know He's Right." He thought, "Son of a bitch, he is right." He later said this event influenced his shift away from supporting gun control laws.
After Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, Heston, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, and James Stewart supported President Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968. He also endorsed Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election.
By the 1980s, Heston supported gun rights and changed his political party from Democratic to Republican. He said, "I didn't change. The Democratic Party changed." In 1987, he registered as a Republican and supported Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Heston resigned from Actors Equity in protest over the union’s refusal to let a white actor play a Eurasian role in Miss Saigon, calling the decision "obscenely racist." He criticized CNN for reporting on the Gulf War in a way he believed harmed the allied effort. At a Time Warner meeting, he criticized the company for releasing an Ice-T album that included a song titled "Cop Killer." While filming The Savage, he was initiated into the Miniconjou Lakota Nation, even though he had no Native American heritage.
In a 1997 speech titled "Fighting the Culture War in America," Heston spoke about what he called a "culture war" being led by media, educators, and politicians. He questioned why terms like "Hispanic Pride" or "Black Pride" are accepted but "White Pride" is seen negatively. He also criticized political correctness, saying it "was tyranny with manners." In a speech to Harvard Law School students, he called them "the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation" and urged them to challenge what they saw as unfair social norms.
Heston served as president of the NRA from 1998 until his resignation in 2003. At the 2000 NRA convention, he raised a rifle and said, "I will not allow a potential Al Gore administration to take away my Second Amendment rights except from my cold, dead hands." He repeated this phrase when he announced his resignation in 2003.
In the 2002 film Bowling for Columbine, director Michael Moore interviewed Heston about an NRA meeting held in Denver, Colorado, shortly after the Columbine High School massacre. Moore criticized the timing and location of the meeting. When asked why gun-related homicide rates are higher in the United States than in other countries, Heston did not provide a complete answer.
Personal life
In March 1944, Heston married Lydia Marie Clarke, a student at Northwestern University, at Grace Methodist Church in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina.
Heston was an Episcopalian, and he was described as "a spiritual man" with a "down-to-earth style." He respected religious traditions and especially appreciated the historical parts of the Christian faith.
In 1996, Heston had a hip replacement. In 1998, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. After receiving radiation treatment, the cancer went into remission. In 2000, he shared publicly that he had been treated for alcoholism at a clinic in Utah during May and June of that year.
On August 9, 2002, Heston announced through a recorded message that he had symptoms that match those of Alzheimer's disease. In July 2003, during his last public event, Heston received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House from President George W. Bush. In March 2005, newspapers reported that family and friends were surprised by how quickly his illness worsened, and that he sometimes struggled to leave his bed.
Heston died on April 5, 2008, at his home in Beverly Hills, California, with Lydia, his wife for 64 years, by his side. He was 84 years old. Heston was also survived by their son, Fraser Clarke Heston, and their daughter, Holly Ann Heston. His family did not share the cause of his death. A month later, news outlets reported that he died from pneumonia.
Early messages of respect came from important figures. President George W. Bush called Heston "a man of character and integrity, with a big heart." He noted that Heston served his country during World War II, participated in the civil rights movement, led a labor union, and supported Americans' Second Amendment rights. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan said she was "heartbroken" by Heston's death and shared a statement: "I will never forget Chuck as a hero on the big screen, but more importantly, I considered him a hero in life for the many times he supported Ronnie in her work."
Heston's funeral took place on April 12, 2008, and was attended by about 250 people, including Nancy Reagan and Hollywood figures such as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olivia de Havilland, Keith Carradine, Pat Boone, Tom Selleck, Oliver Stone (who cast Heston in his 1999 movie Any Given Sunday), Rob Reiner, and Christian Bale.
The funeral was held at Episcopal Parish of St. Matthew's Church in Pacific Palisades, the church where Heston regularly attended Sunday services since the early 1980s. He was cremated, and his ashes were given to his family.