A face like an eroded cliff: Beyond the tough exterior of ‘Death Wish’ vigilante Charles Bronson

On location near Guadix, Spain, in May 1968, Charles Bronson is “Harmonica”, a mysterious gunman who ultimately challenges Henry Fonda’s sadistic gang in Sergio Leone’s classic western epic, “Once Upon a Time In the West.” Image Credit: Cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli / Paramount

Underappreciated actor Charles Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, often referred to as “Scooptown” by local residents, on November 3, 1921. Of Lithuanian and Russian descent, the occasionally gruff and always soft-spoken star passed away on August 30, 2003 after battling Alzheimer’s Disease and pneumonia.

But who was Bronson on and off the silver screen? It must be said that the charismatic actor truly experienced very hardscrabble beginnings. When noted film critic Roger Ebert visited the wintry New York City set of Death Wish — the film that ultimately made Bronson a star in America — in Jan. 1974, the actor consented to a rare interview.

Extremely private and reserved off camera, Bronson admitted how rough his childhood was. “I remember my father had shaved us all bald to avoid lice,” he recalled. “Times were poor. I wore hand-me-downs. And because the kids just older than me in the family were girls, sometimes I had to wear my sisters’ hand-me-downs. I remember going to school in a dress. And my socks, when I got home sometimes I’d have to take them off and give them to my brother to wear into the mines” [Bronson had 14 siblings].