His first big break was a bit part in the Gary Cooper film You’re in the Navy Now in 1951. After the war, he worked odd jobs, including renting deck chairs on the boardwalk in Atlantic City and painting scenery for a theater troupe, before enrolling at the Pasadena Playhouse in California to study acting. He eventually went to work in the mines himself until he was drafted to serve in World War II. Bronson never knew much about his father, and the family struggled to get by.
The 11th of 15 children born to a poor Lithuanian immigrant family in Pennsylvania, Bronson was raised by a Solo Mom after his coal-miner father died. But as a little boy, Charles Bronson-born Charles Buchinsky-was once sent to school in his sister’s dress because it was all he had to wear.
In the movies, he was the tough-guy vigilante, perhaps most famous for starring in Death Wish and its four sequels.
