Charlton Heston

John Charles Carter (born October 4, 1924) better known as Charlton Heston is an American actor famous for portraying Moses in The Ten Commandments[?] and for various science fiction films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1959 performance in the title role of Ben-Hur. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1966 to 1971.

Heston was no passive actor. He believed in what he was doing. In 1958 he maneuvered Universal International into allowing Orson Welles to direct him in Touch of Evil and in 1965, he fought the studio in support of Sam Peckinpah when an attempt was made to interfere with his direction of Major Dundee.

Politically, he is a conservative and has clashed at various times in his life with Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. He is an honorary life member National Rifle Association (a U.S. gun rights lobbyist group) and was its president and spokesman from 1998 until April 2003. In 2001, he sought an unprecedented fourth term as president and made the famous declaration while holding an American Revolutionary War era musket over his head, "I have only five words for you: From my cold, dead hands."

He has made statements favoring the NRA position on gun rights and serves on the National Advisory Board of Accuracy in Media. In the 1960s however he was a prominent liberal — he marched with Martin Luther King in Washington, D.C. and was one of the narrators for the documentary King: A Filmed Record... Memphis to Montgomery (1970).

In 2002, he publicly announced that he has Alzheimer's disease.

Filmography (a partial list)

• The Ten Commandments[?]
• Touch of Evil (see article for Heston's support of Orson Welles)
• Major Dundee[?], never released as originally filmed
• The Greatest Show on Earth
• Ben-Hur
• " [["The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965 as John the Baptist)]]
• The Agony and the Ecstasy[?] (as Michelangelo)
• Soylent Green (as Detective Thorn)
• Planet of the Apes (1968 movie) (as Taylor in the original)
• Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970, also as Taylor)[?]
• The Three Musketeers (as Cardinal Richelieu)
• Airport 75(1974)
• Earthquake(1974)
• Two Minute Warning
• Hamlet (Branagh version, as The Player King)
• A Man for All Seasons (the 1988 version, as Thomas More)
• The Private War of Major Benson
• Bowling for Columbine (documentary film, appearing as himself)