Tony Curtis, real name Bernard Schwartz, was born on June 3, 1925, in Bronx, New York, United States. He is an American actor who rose to prominence in the 1950s because of his attractive appearance. In both tragic and comedic roles, he received critical acclaim and widespread appeal.
Although his early film roles were primarily based on his good looks, by the second half of the 1950s, he had shown range and depth in a variety of serious and comedic roles. He had a succession of unimpressive roles in his early career, including swashbucklers, westerns, light comedies, sports pictures, and a musical.
However, by the time he featured in Houdini (1953) with his wife Janet Leigh, which critic David Thomson calls ‘his first unambiguous hit,’ his acting had vastly improved. With co-star Burt Lancaster, he received his first real acclaim as a dramatic actor in Sweet Smell of Success (1957). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in The Defiant Ones (1958) alongside Sidney Poitier the next year.
Curtis subsequently produced possibly his best performance in the comedy some like It Hot, in which he played three interconnected parts (1959). It was dubbed an ‘outrageous movie’ by Thomson, and it was chosen as the funniest American film ever made in an American Film Institute poll.
After 1960, his stardom and movie career waned significantly. In 1968, he starred in the true-life movie The Boston Strangler, which some consider being his final major cinema performance. With his chilling performance of serial killer Albert DeSalvo, he cemented his reputation as a serious actor. In 1962, Curtis played the Ukrainian Cossack Andrei in the historical action romantic epic Taras Bulba, in which Yul Brynner played the principal character.
Curtis later played American millionaire Danny Wilde in the ITC TV series The Persuaders!, with Roger Moore. There were twenty-four episodes in the series. Curtis’ first wife, actress Janet Leigh, gave birth to actresses Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis.
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