Oscar-winning actor Anthony Quinn, best remembered for his roles in Lawrence Of Arabia and Zorba The Greek, died of pneumonia with respiratory failure on Sunday, aged 86.
“He was a larger-than-life figure,” said his friend Vincent “Buddy” Cianci. “He had no pretenses about him at all. He wasn’t the Hollywood star that had so many different idiosyncrasies and so many different demands. He was just a guy who had a talent and didn’t think he was very special at all.
When he was your friend he was your friend, and he was truly a remarkable person.”
Quinn was born in Mexico in April of 1915 to an Irish father and a Mexican mother. The family moved to poverty-stricken East Los Angeles, where he worked as a butcher, a boxer, and a slaughterhouse worker. Quinn won a scholarship to study architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom he developed a close relationship.
Quinn’s acting career began in 1936, and after a series of bit parts, he signed with Paramount in 1940 and made a name playing gangsters, Indians, and kings. “I never get the girl,” Quinn once joked. “I wind up with a country instead.”
Quinn won a pair of best supporting actor Oscars for 1952’s Viva Zapata! and Lust For Life, in which he portrayed painter Paul Gauguin. Other career highlights include Requiem For A Heavyweight and the 1983 stage adaptation of Zorba.
The legendary actor married his first wife Katherine, the daughter of filmmaker Cecil B DeMille, in 1937, though the two split in 1963. He married Iolanda Addolori in 1966, and together they had three children. They divorced in 1997, and between his wives and mistresses, Quinn fathered 13 children in all.
In the late 1970s Quinn went to live in Italy, working in film and returning to his early love of painting and sculpture. He later moved back to the US and lived out roughly the last 10 years of his life in Bristol, Rhode Island.
“He was motivated by his passion for his art,” said Irene Nagy Dessewffy, a friend of Quinn’s who also produced art shows featuring his work. “I saw 29 opening nights of Zorba, and other productions in between, and every single night it was as if it were the first time. He did it with a passion.”
Quinn is survived by his sister, Stella, his partner Kathy, and 12 children, aged four to 60.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
