Burt Lancaster
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Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor. Initially known for playing tough characters with tender hearts, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series. Lancaster was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor (winning once), and he also won two BAFTA Awards, one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor, one Silver Bear, one Volpi Cup and two David di Donatello awards. The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as #19 of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Lancaster performed as a circus acrobat in the 1930s. At the age of 32 and after serving in World War II, he landed a role in a Broadway play and drew the attention of a Hollywood agent. His appearance in film noir The Killers in 1946 with Ava Gardner was a critical success and launched both of their careers. In 1948, Lancaster starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck in the commercially and critically acclaimed film Sorry, Wrong Number, where he portrayed the husband to her bedridden invalid character. In 1953, Lancaster played the illicit lover of Deborah Kerr in the military drama From Here to Eternity. A box office smash, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and landed a Best Actor nomination for Lancaster. Later in the 1950s, he starred in The Rainmaker (1956) with Katharine Hepburn, earning a Best Actor Golden Globe nomination, and in 1957 he starred in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas. During the 1950s, his production company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster was highly successful, with Lancaster acting in films such as: Trapeze (1956), a box office smash in which he used his acrobatic skills and for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor; Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a dark drama now considered a classic; Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), a World War II submarine drama with Clark Gable; and Separate Tables (1958), a hotel-set drama which received seven Oscar nominations. In the early 1960s, Lancaster starred in a string of critically successful films, each in very disparate roles. Playing a charismatic con-man religious revivalist in Elmer Gantry in 1960 won him the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Actor. Lancaster played a Nazi war criminal in 1961 in the all-star war crimes trial film Judgment at Nuremberg. Playing a bird expert prisoner in Birdman of Alcatraz in 1962, he earned the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination. In 1963, Lancaster traveled to Italy to star as an Italian prince in Visconti's epic period drama The Leopard. In 1964, he played a US Air Force general who, opposed by a colonel played by Douglas, tries to overthrow the President in Seven Days in May. Then, in 1966, he played an explosives expert in the western The Professionals. Although the reception of his 1968 film The Swimmer was initially lackluster upon release, in the years after it has grown in stature critically and attained a cult following. In 1970, Lancaster starred in the box-office hit, air-disaster drama Airport. In 1974, he starred in another Visconti film, Conversation Piece. He experienced a career resurgence in 1980 with the crime-romance Atlantic City, winning the BAFTA for Best Actor and landing his fourth Oscar nomination. Starting in the late 1970s, he also appeared in television mini-series, including the award-winning Separate but Equal with Sidney Poitier. He continued acting into his late 70s, until a stroke in 1990 forced him to retire; four years later he died from a heart attack. His final film role was as Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams (1989).