Burt Lancaster

Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor and film producer.

Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series.

He was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor (winning once), and he also won two BAFTA Awards and one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor.

The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in New York City, at his parents' home at 209 East 106th Street, the son of Elizabeth (née Roberts) and mailman James Lancaster.

Both of his parents were Protestants of working-class origin.

All four of his grandparents were emigrants from Ireland to the United States, from the province of Ulster.

His maternal grandparents were from Belfast and were descendants of English dissenters who had colonised Ireland as part of the Plantation of Ulster.

Lancaster grew up in East Harlem, New York City.

He developed a great interest and skill in gymnastics while attending DeWitt Clinton High School, where he was a basketball star.

Before he graduated from DeWitt Clinton, his mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Lancaster was accepted by New York University with an athletic scholarship, but dropped out.

At the age of 9, Lancaster met Nick Cravat with whom he developed a lifelong partnership.

Together, they learned to act in local theatre productions and circus arts at Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses.

Lancaster performed as a circus acrobat in the 1930s.

After serving in World War II, the 32-year-old Lancaster landed a role in a Broadway play and drew the attention of a Hollywood agent.

In the 1930s, they formed the acrobat duo Lang and Cravat and soon joined the Kay Brothers circus.

However, in 1939, an injury forced Lancaster to give up the profession, with great regret.

He then found temporary work, first as a salesman for Marshall Fields and then as a singing waiter in various restaurants.

His breakthrough role was in the film noir The Killers in 1946 alongside Ava Gardner.

A critical success, it launched both of their careers.

Not long after in 1948, Lancaster starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck in the commercially and critically acclaimed film Sorry, Wrong Number where he portrayed the husband to her bedridden, invalid character.

Later in the 1950s, he starred in The Rainmaker (1956), with Katharine Hepburn, earning a Best Actor Golden Globe nomination, and in 1957 he starred in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas.

During the 1950s, his production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was highly successful, with Lancaster acting in films such as: Trapeze (1956), a box office smash in which he used his acrobatic skills and for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor; Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a dark drama today considered a classic; Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), a WWII submarine drama with Clark Gable; and Separate Tables (1958), a hotel-set drama which received seven Oscar nominations.

In 1953, Lancaster played the illicit lover of Deborah Kerr in the military drama From Here to Eternity.

A box office smash, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and landed a Best Actor nomination for Lancaster.

In the early 1960s, Lancaster starred in a string of critically successful films, each in very disparate roles.

Playing a charismatic biblical con-man in Elmer Gantry in 1960 won him the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor.

He played a Nazi war criminal in 1961 in the all-star, war-crime-trial film, Judgment at Nuremberg.

Playing a bird expert prisoner in Birdman of Alcatraz in 1962, he earned the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination.

In 1963, Lancaster traveled to Italy to star as an Italian prince in Visconti's epic period drama The Leopard.

In 1964, he played a US Air Force General who, opposed by a Colonel played by Douglas, tries to overthrow the President in Seven Days in May.

Then, in 1966, he played an explosives expert in the western The Professionals.

Although the reception of his 1968 film The Swimmer was initially lackluster upon release, in the years after it has grown in stature critically and attained a cult following.

In 1970, Lancaster starred in the box-office hit, air-disaster drama Airport.

Starting in the late 1970s, he also appeared in television mini-series, including the award-winning Separate but Equal with Sidney Poitier.

In 1974 he again starred in a Visconti film, Conversation Piece.

He experienced a career resurgence in 1980 with the crime-romance Atlantic City, winning the BAFTA for Best Actor and landing his fourth Oscar nomination.

He continued acting into his late 70s, until a stroke in 1990 forced him to retire; four years later he died from a heart attack.

His final film role was in the Oscar-nominated Field of Dreams.