The legendary Charlton Heston grants Mr. Showbiz a rare peek into his world:
By Rick Schultz
(Given in:1995)
CHARLTON HESTON turned seventy-two early last month, but he shows no signs of slowing down. He has had recent roles in Tombstone, Wayne's World 2, and True Lies, and plans to appear in Kenneth Branagh's upcoming film version of Hamlet. He also has a CD-ROM coming out this Christmas based on the Bible series he did for Arts & Entertainment, and has just published a six-hundred-page autobiography titled In the Arena. ("My best work? I don't know, my career isn't over yet.")
His imposing stature and commanding voice--he played Moses in The Ten Commandments, after all--have lost little power over the years, but he admits that he is not fearless. His scariest career moment occurred during the filming of Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler. ("Willie Wyler dropped into my dressing room ten days into the shoot and said, 'Chuck, you have to be better for me in this part.' I have always been very confident about any part I did, but that was tough.")
He says that despite his public life, he is a shy man. ("Many actors are--Olivier, for instance. Singers and comics have to be outgoing because they're talking directly to the audience. Actors hide behind a character.")
He has many opinions about trends in modern movies, and would have made a fine film critic. He does not appreciate excess for its own sake, in movies or in life. He thinks manners count very much. ("One of the problems of our time is the gradual erosion of civil discourse--comity, if you like. I don't know why it's disappeared, but people are very brusque with each other; I take some pains to call strangers to whom I speak 'Sir' or 'Ma'am.'")
He was once a Democrat, but suddenly switched parties in the sixties. ("It wasn't me that changed, it was the Democratic Party that slid sharply to the left and right out from under me. My views are still what Jack Kennedy ran on.") He has been approached about running for the Senate, at different times, by both parties. ("But I'd have to give up acting, and I was not--and am not--prepared to do that.")
He was born Charles Carter on October 4, 1923, in a suburb of Chicago, at Evanston Community Hospital, to Russell Whitford Carter and Lilla Charlton. He does not remember the name of the doctor who delivered him. ("I have no memory for names, numbers, addresses, or faces. My memory is for recording--transferring into my memory--printed text, lines from a play, dialogue.")
He also doesn't remember the house he first lived in. ("I think my parents took me back to Michigan before I was a year old. I have no memory of that at all. The house I lived in my boyhood in Michigan, as far as I know, still stands, and it's a modest bungalow in the woods.") When he was ten, his parents divorced. His mother later remarried. His stepfather's name was Chet Heston.
He enjoyed high school, but regrets that he did not make more of it. ("I was a hick kid from the woods who didn't really fit in there until I discovered the drama program. Unhappily, since I have a strong mnemonic faculty, it was easy for me to slide through to the easy Bs. If I'd really worked, I could have gotten an education you can't get in some colleges now. But high school led me to my career. It was where I first studied acting.")
His work in theatre won him a scholarship to the School of Speech at Northwestern University, where he met Lydia, his wife of fifty-plus years. He finessed his way into a small part on Broadway in Katharine Cornell's stage production of Antony and Cleopatra. His dream project would be to remake his largely unsuccessful 1973 film version of Antony and Cleopatra, which he directed. ("Cleopatra may be unplayable because it's the greatest woman's part--there's just too much to her.")
He has a lot of good things to say about fame. ("It has complicated my life a little, but not enormously. I had to learn to be a public person, but fame has given me a good deal of control over my career, which I otherwise would not have had. Also, chances to work with some extraordinary men and women.")
He has always been a physical, hands-on actor, but he recalls sharing a moment of uncertainty about riding an open chariot pulled by a team of horses for the thrilling chariot race sequence in Ben-Hur. ("The great stuntman Yakima Canutt looked at me and said, 'Chuck, you just make sure you stay in the chariot. I guarantee you're gonna win the damn race.'")
He still works out on a regular basis. ("I do a forty-minute pool workout every morning, and I have an exercycle. When you're eighteen, you don't have to work out. As an actor, I realized I had to keep my body in shape.") He is not sure how to go about getting more Americans in shape. ("It's terrible what's happening. I read an article about fat little kids. People are apparently starving to death and yet we see fat kids.")
He considers himself "choreographically challenged." ("I dance terribly, but when the great ballet star Robert Helpmann coached me and Ava Gardner on 55 Days at Peking, I did wonderfully. I just didn't learn it young enough to ever be comfortable doing it.")
He claims he has never tasted a bagel. ("Wherever there are bagels, there are also English muffins, bran muffins, and toast, and I'm more familiar with that. Bagels always seemed quite tough when you looked at them.") He likes to eat steak, fish, chicken, peanut butter and rice. ("We don't really eat desserts anymore--weight control. Fruit's okay.")
He wears nothing to bed, and can work with only minimal sleep. ("I can do quite well over the short run. For a few days, I can get by on five or six hours a night. I prefer seven, but I don't need more than that, and I never take more.") He's six-foot-three and somewhere over two hundred pounds, so it's no surprise to hear about his bed. ("I sleep in a very, very large one.")
