When Charles Bronson was born, he was named Charles Dennis Buchinsky and he was the 11th of 15 children born to a dirt-poor Lithuanian immigrant couple. The family lived in a tiny shack with so little space the kids had to take turns sleeping in “shifts”…
The Buchinsky family worked in the coal mines. First generation immigrants, they didn’t speak English at home, only Lithuanian and Russian.
In 1933, Bronson’s father died of cancer. And Charles, only twelve years old at the time, took a job as a miner himself. He worked in the mines from the age of 12 until 22, when he enlisted to fight in WWII.
During WWII, Bronson fought in the US Airforce and received a Purple Heart for wounds received in battle. It was the only time he ever had proper food — he recalled being so poor as a child that he and his siblings would drink hot tea instead of milk even as infants. By the time Buchinsky changed his name into Bronson and went to Hollywood, he was absolutely the real deal. He was every bit as tough as he looked and he had the type of muscles and hands only true hardship can give a man. No gym strength, no gym physique, but the type of steel underneath one’s skin you get when you’re worked to the bone from early childhood…
In 1974, Charles Bronson told film critic Roger Ebert: “I’m only a product. Like a cake of soap, to be sold as well as possible.” Acting was a job to Bronson. He had no fanciful notions, didn’t do “method acting” and did not think of himself as anything special — he was a blue collar worker who got lucky, and never forgot to count his lucky stars for the privilege of leaving the mining town of his youth where many of his young friends died when mines caved in.