Actor and political activist Charlton Heston dies at 84

Charlton Heston, the Oscar winning actor who portrayed Moses and other figures in the ‘50s and ‘60s and later championed conservative values as head of the National Rifle Association, has died.
 

The actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, according to The Associated Press.
“Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life.  He was known for his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and of course, for the roles he played,” Heston’s family said in a statement.  
Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the the AP.  In a 2002 statement, Heston said if he tells a story to you for a second time, just laugh at it again.

He was born Charlton Carter in a Chicago suburb on Oct.  4, 1923.  His parents moved to St. Helen, Mich. where his father, Russell Carter, operated a lumber mill.  
Growing up in the Michigan woods with almost no playmates, young Heston read books of adventure and devised his own games while wandering the countryside with his rifle.  

Heston’s parents divorced and his mother remarried Chester Heston, a factory plant superintendent in Wilmette, Ill., an upscale northern Chicago suburb.  Shy and feeling displaced in the big city, Heston had trouble adjusting to the new high school.  He took refuge in the drama department, according to the AP.  
“What acting offered me was the chance to be many other people,” he said in a 1986 interview.  “In those days I wasn’t satisfied with being me.”  

Calling himself Charlton Heston, he won an acting scholarship to Northwestern University in 1941.  He excelled in campus plays and appeared on Chicago radio.  
In 1943, he enlisted in the Army and served as a radio-gunner in the Aleutians.  

In 1944 he married another Northwestern drama student, Lydia Clarke, and after his army discharge in 1947, they moved to New York to seek acting jobs.
Heston assumed the role of a leader off-screen as well.  He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and chairman of the American Film Institute and marched in the civil rights movement of the 1950s, according to the AP.  

Keith Nagy of the communications and theater arts department said of Heston, “I was lucky enough in my college days to see him live on stage in Los Angeles twice...ironically doing the lead role in the play ‘The Crucible’ as John Proctor.  The play was written by Arthur Miller during the conservative McCarthy era where they were witch hunting liberals at the time.”
With age, he grew more conservative and campaigned for conservative political candidates.  In June 1998, Heston was elected president of the NRA, for which he posed for ads holding a rifle.  

He famously used to say that the only way his gun would be taken away is, “From my cold dead hands.”  
Fans remember Heston for some of the most epic moments on film: Parting the Red Sea as Moses in “The Ten Commandments,” cursing his self-destructive species as he stumbles on the remnants of the Statue of Liberty in “Planet of the Apes,” tearing hell-bent through the chariot race in “Ben-Hur.”

“Ben-Hur” earned 11 Oscars, the most ever until 1997’s “Titanic” and 2003’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” tied it.
Heston’s jutting jaw, regal bearing and booming voice served him well as Marc Antony in “Julius Caesar” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” Michelangelo in “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” and John the Baptist in “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”

 “We knew him as an adoring husband, a kind and devoted father and a gentle grandfather with an infectious sense of humor.  He served these far greater roles with tremendous faith, courage and dignity,” his family said in a statement.