Many Hollywood marriages don’t last long—but that wasn’t the case for Charlton Heston and his wife, Lydia Clarke. In this photo, they’re pictured with their son, Fraser. Later, they also had a daughter named Holly.
A biographer wrote that Charlton fell for Lydia the moment he met her. In Charlton Heston: Hollywood’s Last Icon by Marc Eliot, Charlton said, “I clearly found the right girl the first time, and I was smart enough to realize it.”
At first, Lydia didn’t feel the same. She admitted, “He was full of himself—arrogant, conceited, and very sure of himself.” But she agreed to go on a date, and that’s when everything changed. “That was it,” she said. “I fell completely in love with him.”
Charlton never had any scandals during their marriage. He once said, “I’ve never cheated and never wanted to. I actually like being married, and nothing is worth risking that.”
They got married in 1944 and stayed deeply in love until Charlton passed away in 2008—a marriage that lasted an incredible 64 years.