Charlton Heston Biography

Fast Facts

• Spent his early years in a rural Michigan town where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse
• In high school, he performed with a local theater company, which subsequently gave him a drama scholarship to Northwestern
• Served in the Air Force during World War II before moving to New York to pursue an acting career
• Made his Broadway debut in Katharine Cornell's 1947 production of Anthony and Cleopatra; he later made his silver-screen directorial debut with 1971's Anthony and Cleopatra
• Big break came when Cecil B
• DeMille cast him as Moses in the 1956 epic The Ten Commandments (his months-old son joined him on-screen as baby Moses)
• In the 1960s, he supported Rev
• Martin Luther King Jr
• in the campaign for passage of the Civil Rights Act
• President Reagan selected him to cochair the White House Task Force on the Arts and Humanities in 1981
• His autobiography, In the Arena, was published in 1995
• In 1997, he received the Kennedy Center Honors
• Served as president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2002