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Burt Lancaster

Fame came to Burt Lancaster with his first film role, as the doomed Swede in Universal's "The Killers" (1946), but the former circus acrobat knew better than to leave his career in other hands. After less than two years in Hollywood, Lancaster formed his own production company and took the lead in such popular successes as the Technicolor swashbucklers "The Flame and the Arrow" (1950) and "The Crimson Pirate" (1952) and the noble failure "Sweet Smell of Success" (1959), later called one the greatest films of all time. The athletic, savvy but passionate Lancaster remained a box office draw for 20 years, winning a 1961 Academy Award for playing the corrupt evangelist "Elmer Gantry" (1960), but his power to pull in moviegoers waned with the death of the studio system and his own disinterest in acting the Hollywood hero. Lancaster took chances in such challenging films as "The Swimmer" (1968), "Castle Keep" (1969) and "Ulzana's Raid" (1972) while his best work through the next decade was often in European features like "1900" (1976) and "Atlantic City" (1980), which netted him an Oscar nomination. In his later years, the actor was better known to younger Americans from TV spots for MCI, the ACLU, and AIDS research, and for his final film role in the hit "Field of Dreams" (1989). Five years after his death in 1994, the American Film Institute pointed a new generation of film fans Burt Lancaster's way when they conferred upon him the posthumous designation of living legend.