Charles Bronson, born Charles Dennis Buchinsky (or Buchinskas) in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Mountain Coal region north of Johnstown. During the McCarthy hearings, he changed his last name to Bronson, fearing that Buchinsky sounded “to Russian.” He was one of 15 children born to a Lithuanian immigrant father of Lipka Tatar ancestry, and a Lithuanian-American mother. His father hailed from the town of Druskininkai. His mother’s parents were born in Lithuania.
Bronson was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series. He often cast in the role of a police officer or gunfighter, often in revenge-oriented plot lines.