Charlton Heston (1924-2008)

Iconic actor Charlton Heston died at age 83 on Saturday, April 5, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. From a cinephile's point of view, the best movie he was ever in was arguably Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958). As an actor, one of Heston's best performances was as the Player King in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996). But Heston was most famous for portraying Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), and he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the title role in Ben-Hur (1959). He also portrayed Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and he appeared in many hit movies, including El Cid (1961), Planet of the Apes (1968) and Earthquake (1974). All the films named here are available on DVD.