Charlton Heston is best known for uttering classic lines like “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” from 1968’s Planet of the Apes, and “It’s people! They’re making our food out of people!” from 1973’s Soylent Green.
He’s also one of the most recognizable actors from the Biblical film era, parting the Red Sea as Moses in 1954’s The Ten Commandments and driving a mean chariot in his Oscar winning role in 1959’s Ben-Hur.
For more than five decades, Heston was that larger-than-life screen persona, a living portrait of machismo and potent manliness projected 70 feet high and 40 feet wide.
He helped save citizens from a crumbling Los Angeles in 1974’s Earthquake, and he shimmied into a hole in the side of a 747 to pilot the plane to a safe landing in Airport 1975.
If a movie needed a strong, virile leading man, Heston was every casting director’s go-to guy.
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