Gender: Male Religion: Protestant Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Actor Party Affiliation: Republican
Nationality: United States Executive summary:The Ten Commandments
Military service: US Army Air Corps (WWII, Sgt.)
Charlton Heston's parents were divorced when he was ten, and he was raised by his mother and, later, stepfather. He studied drama at Northwestern University, where he first stepped before the camera at age 16 in a student-filmed silent production of the Henrik Ibsen play, Peer Gynt.
As an actor, Heston is most famous for larger-than-life roles in a series of epics, including Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958), Ben-Hur (1959), which won him an Oscar, El Cid (1961), and the underrated Khartoum (1966). And then there's Planet of the Apes (1968), Soylent Green (1973), the disaster flicks Airport (1974) and Earthquake (1975), and TV's The Colbys (1985-87), an uninspired spin-off of Dynasty.
Off screen, Heston was active in the civil rights movement, and marched on Washington DC with Martin Luther King in 1963. Later in life he served as president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2002. As NRA chief, Heston once held a 1776-era musket and uttered his most famous line: "I have only five words for you: From my cold, dead hands."
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AKA John Charlton Carter