Next person biography:
Charlton Heston was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1923, in No Man's Land, Illinois, to Lila (Charlton) and Russell Whitford Carter, who operated a sawmill. He had English and Scottish ancestry, with recent Canadian forebears. Heston made his feature film debut as the lead character in a 16mm production of Peer Gynt (1941),based on the Henrik Ibsen play. In 1944, Heston enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces, serving for two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner aboard a B-25 Mitchell stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the 77th Bombardment Squadron of the Eleventh Air Force. He reached the rank of Staff Sergeant.
Heston married Northwestern University student Lydia Marie Clarke, who was six months his senior, in the same year he joined the military. After his military service, Heston returned to acting, playing 'Marc Antony' in Julius Caesar (1950),and firmly stamped himself as genuine leading man material with his performance as circus manager 'Brad Braden' in the Cecil B. DeMille spectacular The Greatest Show on Earth (1952),also starring James Stewart and Cornel Wilde.
Heston's most famous role in politics came as the five-term president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003. He was a supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, but later became a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan.
