Final curtain for Bronson

Charles Bronson, the ultimate strong, silent star who appeared in three of the most classic tough guy movies of all time, has died at the age of 81.

The star of The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape died from pneumonia in a Los Angeles hospital. It was announced early this morning by Bronson's publicist who said his wife, Kim, was at his side. The actor had been ill for several weeks.

Bronson, who admitted his craggy features and gruff manner made him an unlikely Hollywood leading man, once quipped: "I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited."

Despite starring roles in mainstream films including The Battle Of The Bulge, Bronson remained outside Hollywood's A-list, only becoming a major international star after leaving the United States.

In Europe, his grizzled looks and gruff manner won him a huge following. In Italy he was known as Il Brutto - the ugly man - and in 1971 he was presented with a Golden Globe as "the most popular actor in the world".

After the Sergio Leone spaghetti western Once Upon A Time In The West became a huge international hit in the same year, he returned to the US in triumph. Explaining why it had taken him so long to win acceptance by the major studios, he said: "Maybe I'm too masculine. Maybe I don't look like anybody's ideal."

With British director Michael Winner, he played the most controversial role in his career of more than 60 films, as the vigilante in the Death Wish series.

He played a well-to-do, liberal architect who takes the law into his own hands after thugs kill his wife and rape his daughter.

Critics were mostly appalled after the film's release in 1974, while audiences in crime-plagued cities such as New York cheered as Bronson hunted and executed the "vermin" who had destroyed his family. In grim twist, four youths were shot later that year by Bernard Goetz after they tried to mug him on the New York subway.

After making three sequels to the original Death Wish, Bronson defended the series, saying: "I think they provide satisfaction for people who are victimised by crime and look in vain for authorities to protect them."

Bronson's early years were as tough as the on-screen characters he eventually played. Born Charles Bunchinsky, he was the eleventh of 15 children of Lithuanian immigrants so poor that at six he was forced to wear his sister's clothes to school. At 16 he worked as a coal miner in Scooptown, Pennsylvania, taking the toughest jobs because the pay was better. He was also jailed for assault and robbery.

After serving in the US Air Force as a tail-gunner in the Second World War, Bronson vowed never to go back to the mines.

Instead, he became a scenery painter, winning small roles until he was spotted by a Hollywood talent scout and cast with Gary Cooper in You're In The Navy Now in 1951.

Bronson married three times and is survived by six children. After his first marriage ended, he was introduced to the young British actress Jill Ireland in 1966, telling her then husband David McCallum: "I'm going to marry your wife." The following year he made good his boast, but the marriage ended in tragedy when Ireland died in 1990 from breast cancer. A year earlier, her son, Jason McCallum Bronson, had died of a drug overdose.

After making the last Death Wish in 1994, Bronson turned down most later scripts, saying they were not challenging enough. In his final years he succumbed to Alzheimer's disease and was cared for by his wife Kim, 40 years his junior, at their Beverly Hills home.