Charlton Heston

His earliest colonial ancestors arrived in America from England in the 1600s.

His maternal great-grandparents and namesakes were Englishman William Charlton from Sunderland and Scotswoman Mary Drysdale Charlton.

They emigrated to Canada, where his grandmother, Marian Emily Charlton, was born in 1872.

In his autobiography Heston refers to his father participating in his family's construction business.

When Heston was an infant, his father's work moved the family to St. Helen, Michigan.

It was a rural, heavily forested part of the state, and Heston lived an isolated yet idyllic existence, spending much time hunting and fishing in the backwoods of the area.

When Heston was ten years old, his parents divorced after having three children.

Shortly thereafter, his mother remarried and Charlton, with his younger sister Lilla and younger brother Alan, next moved to Wilmette, Illinois.

Heston and his two siblings took the surname of his mother’s new husband.

The three children attended New Trier High School, which would become the high school also for the movie stars Rock Hudson and Ann-Margret.

He recalled living there, "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".

Contradictions on paper and in an interview surround when "Charlton" became Heston's first name.

When Heston's maternal grandmother and his true maternal grandfather Charles Baines separated or divorced in the early 1900s, Marian (née Charlton) Baines married William Henry Lawton in 1907.

Charlton Heston's mother, Lilla, and her sister May were adopted by their grandfather and changed their last name to Charlton in order to distance themselves from their biological father, Mr. Baines, who was an undesirable father figure.

Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923April 5, 2008) was an American actor and political activist.

He gained stardom for his leading man roles in numerous Hollywood films including biblical epics, science-fiction films and action films.

He won the Academy Award as well as nominations for three Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards.

John Charles Carter was born on October 4, 1923, in Wilmette, Illinois, to Lilla (née Baines; 1899–1994) and Russell Whitford Carter (1897–1966), a sawmill operator.

Many sources indicate he was born in Evanston, Illinois.

Heston's autobiography stated otherwise.

The 1930 United States Census record for Richfield, Michigan, in Roscommon County, shows his name as being Charlton J. Carter at age six.

Later accounts and movie studio biographies say he was born John Charles Carter.

The Carters divorced in 1933 and Lilla Carter married Chester Heston.

The newly married Mrs. Heston preferred her children use the same last name as hers.

It was thus as Charlton Heston that he appeared in his first film with younger brother Alan Carter (small role), an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1941).

His nickname was always Chuck.

Heston frequently recounted that while growing up in northern Michigan in a sparsely populated area, he often wandered in the forest, "acting" out characters from books he had read.

Later, in high school, he enrolled in New Trier's drama program, playing the lead role in the amateur silent 16 mm film adaptation of Peer Gynt, from the Ibsen play, by future film activist David Bradley released in 1941.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the civil rights movement.

His other notable credits 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).

Heston gained stardom for his leading roles as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), and as the title role of Ben-Hur (1959), the later of which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

When Russell Carter died in 1966, Charlton's brother and sister changed their surname from Carter to Heston the following year; Charlton did not.

Charlton was his maternal grandmother Marian's maiden name, not his mother Lilla's. This is contrary to how 20th-century references read and what Heston said.

He won numerous honorary accolades including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1967, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1971, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003.

He later acted in Mother Lode (1982), Tombstone (1993), True Lies (1994), Alaska (1996), and Hamlet (1996).

Heston left the Democratic Party in 1987 to become a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan.

Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood.

Heston was partially of Scottish descent, including from the Clan Fraser, but the majority of his ancestry was English.

Heston was a five-term president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), from 1998 to 2003.

After announcing he had Alzheimer's disease in 2002, he retired from both acting and the NRA presidency.