Hollywood star Tony Curtis dies at home aged 85
The Hollywood actor Tony Curtis has died – at the age of 85. Culture Editor Matthew Cain looks back at the star’s life.
Tony Curtis – whose real name was Bernard Schwartz – grew up in a poor Hungarian immigrant family in the Bronx – at one stage spending time in an orphanage because of his parents’ poverty. He left school to join the US Navy during the second world war and served on a submarine tender: he attended acting classes in New York’s Dramatic Workshop after he was discharged.
He appeared in more than 130 films – and gained widespread recognition for his comedic role alongside Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot.
I looked in the mirror and I said, ‘How could they miss me?’ Tony Curtis
He was nominated for an Oscar in 1959 for The Defiant Ones, which also starred Sidney Poitier – and appeared with Kirk Douglas in the Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus. In the early 1970s, he starred alongside Roger Moore in the stylish television detective series The Persuaders.
'I want my hair cut like Tony Curtis'
'A man walks into a barber shop,' my granddad informed me, adding that the man said, 'I want my hair cut like Tony Curtis.' After the barber gives him a nondescript chop, the customer declares, 'Hey, Tony Curtis doesn't have his hair cut like this,' to which the barber replies, 'He does if he comes here.'
Stephanie West recalls the Tony Curtis effect on a Lancashire childhood.
Tony Curtis on his 80th birthday and an iconic pose from his Hollywood heyday in 1952. (Getty)
IN PICTURES: Tony Curtis, the life of a film legend
He was also known for his colourful private life – his mistresses included Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood. However in later life he turned to painting – selling art works worth more than a million pounds on the first day of an exhibition in Los Angeles in 1989. One of his paintings appeared in New York’s Metropolitan museum.
In a recent interview in GQ magazine – Curtis talked about working with his Hollywood contemporaries from Marlon Brando to Cary Grant – and his experiences as a Jew growing up in New York.
“When I was young, there were times that I would get p****d off and angry”, he said. “But I knew I was going to get in the movies. I just knew it. I looked in the mirror and I said, ‘How could they miss me?’ And they didn’t.”
Curtis – who was married five times – is survived by his wife, the horse trainer Jill Vandenberg, and five of his six children, including the actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis.