Charles Bronson, whose birth name was Lithuanian - where his parents were originally from - Karolis Bučinskis, has died at the age of 81. An American actor known for his "bully" roles, most of which were either police detectives, cowboys, soldiers, boxers, or mafia men. Bronson was born in Irving, Pennsylvania, in a coal mining town. He was the 11th child of 15 children born to a Lithuanian-Tatar immigrant father and a Lithuanian-American mother. His father was from the Lithuanian town of Druskininkai. His father died when Bronson was 10 years old, and Bronson went to work in the coal mines, following in the footsteps of his older brothers until he was discharged to join the Army in World War II. He earned one dollar for every ton of coal mined. His family was so poor that he once had to wear his sister's dress to school because he had nothing to wear. There is a conflict of accounts about his enlistment in the Air Force, with his own statement that he served in Northfield, Guam, where he participated in attacks against Japan, and an American journalist's statement that he drove an army truck in Kingman, Arizona. After the war, he decided to pursue his dream of acting, not out of love for the art, but because his eyes were fixed on the financial rewards that acting could bring him. Bronson was a roommate of actor Jack Klugman, who was an up-and-coming actor at the time. Klugman later said that Bronson was good at ironing clothes. His first screen appearance, which is not mentioned, was as a sailor in the 1951 film You're in the Navy Now. In 1952, he fought in the ring with Roy Rogers in Rogers' Show Knock Out. During the McCarthy Trials, he changed his surname to "Bronson", as "Slavic" sounding names were considered suspect at the time. The name was inspired by "Bronson Gate" at Paramount Studios, the studio located on Melrose Avenue and Bronson Street. One of his first screen appearances was as the valet of Vincent Prince in the 1953 horror classic House of Wax. Bronson appeared on television in the 1950s and 1960s, including several lead roles in three of Alfred Hitchcock's miniseries: And So Died Riabouchinska, There Was an Old Woman, and The Woman Who Wanted to Live. He also starred alongside Elizabeth Montgomery in The Twilight Zone Part II in 1961. From 1958 to 1960, Bronson starred in the ABC detective series Man With a Camera, where he played Mike Kovac, a former military photographer working freelance in New York City. Kovac was asked by the police to do work for them, which often put him in danger. Also on the same network, Bronson gained attention in 1963 as Linc, the tough-talking wagon driver, in the American western television series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, co-starring Kurt Russell when he was 12 years old. Although he began his career in the United States, Bronson first became famous in European films, where he was popular in Europe, and was known by two names: the Italians called him "Il Brutto" (The Ugly One) and the French "le sacré monstre" (The Sacred Monster). Although he had not yet become a household name in the United States, this popularity on the European level earned him a Golden Globe Award in 1971 as "the most popular actor in the world." That same year, he wondered if he was "too rough" to be a star in the United States. Bronson's most famous films include The Great Escape (1976), in which he played Danny Velinski, a Polish prisoner who was dubbed the "King of the Tunnels" during the war; The Dirty Dozen (1976), in which he played a wartime death row inmate who is sent on a suicide mission in World War II; Westerns The Magnificent Seven and Sergio Leone's epic Once Upon a Time in the West, in which he and his co-stars played honorable Western heroes fighting for a noble cause to help the weak. Sergio Leone once said of him, "He's the greatest actor I've ever worked with." Leone wanted Bronson to work with him in the Man with No Name trilogy, but Bronson declined every time he asked him to work in the trilogy. In Hard Times, he played a street fighter who makes a living from illegal boxing matches in Louisiana. He is also remembered for Death Wish, the most famous film from his long association with director Michael Winner. This film spawned several sequels in which he starred. In this series, he played Paul Kersey, a successful New York City architect who lives an ordinary life until his wife is murdered and his daughter is raped. Kersey becomes a crime fighter by night - a role that caused a stir as his executions were well received by viewers tired of the rampant crime in society. After the famous Bernhard Goetz incident in 1984, Bronson advised people not to imitate this character. During the 1980s, he presented A number of films with smaller, more famous production companies, including Cannon Films, and films such as The Evil That Men Do and 10 To Midnight, which were panned by critics but provided him with a good income in the 1980s. Charles Bronson's last starring role was in the fifth installment, Death Wish V: The Face of Death. Bronson was married to British actress Jill Ireland from 1968 until her death from breast cancer at the age of 54 in 1990. He had met her when she was the wife of British actor David McCallum. Bronson, who had co-starred with McCallum in The Great Escape, reportedly said to him, "I'm going to marry your wife," and two years later he did, his second marriage. Bronson died on August 30, 2003, of pneumonia while suffering from Alzheimer's disease at DHMC Leb NH. After suffering from general poor health following hip replacement surgery in August 1998, he was buried in Brownsville, Vermont, near his home of 30 years in West Windsor.