BRISTOL, R.I. – Anthony Quinn, the Academy Award-winning actor best remembered for his motion picture roles as the robust hero of Zorba the Greek in 1964 and the fierce Bedouin leader in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, died Sunday of respiratory failure at a hospital in Boston. He was 86.
Mr. Quinn, who lived in Bristol, R.I., had a career that spanned 60 years and included more than 100 feature films. His two Academy Awards were for best supporting actor: the first as the brother of Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! in 1952, the second for his portrayal of painter Paul Gauguin in Lust for Life , in 1956.
His other major film credits include The Guns of Navarone (1961), La Strada (1954), Wild Is the Wind (1957), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956), Last Train From Gun Hill (1959) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962).
“I never get the girl,” Mr. Quinn once joked in an interview. “I wind up with a country instead.”
A barrel-chested man whom some described as being ruggedly handsome, Mr. Quinn went from stage and B-movie roles to become an international leading man renowned for his big-guy sensitivity and honest acting style.
“I have never liked my face,” he said during an interview as he prepared to play a role resembling Aristotle Onassis in the 1978 movie The Greek Tycoon. “When I was a kid, when I was about 20, I went to a plastic surgeon. I didn’t think I could make a career out of that face of mine.”
He was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, to a Mexican mother and an Irish-Mexican father who was emotionally tongue-tied, Mr. Quinn recalled in his autobiography, The Last Tango. He grew up in poverty in East Los Angeles, where his father was a cameraman.
He held a series of menial jobs and worked as a prizefighter and a painter before breaking into the movie industry, playing bit parts in small movies for Paramount. Those early roles included stereotypical ethnic villains, banditos, street toughs, Native Americans, Mafia dons and Hawaiian chiefs.
Feeling constrained in Hollywood, he moved to New York, where he had a successful run on the live stage, playing Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
He once viewed his ethnic background as a burden, but he embraced it as he returned to filmmaking in the early 1950s, when he was cast opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata! But it was his next movie, La Strada, filmed in Italy, that forever changed his career and demonstrated his capacity to play a leading role. He won praise for his portrayal of the film’s main character, a dimwitted strongman.
To many, Mr. Quinn’s Oscar-nominated characterization of the Greek peasant Zorba from the Nikos Kazantzakis novel remained his most memorable role.
The ouzo-drinking and bouzouki-dancing Zorba was Mr. Quinn’s favorite role as well, so much so that he returned to the stage in 1983 in a revival of the musical inspired by the film.
His superstar status was credited for the show’s successful run, and he attacked his role with characteristic gusto.
Though his career had waned in recent years, he continued to make film appearances, appearing notably in 1995’s A Walk in the Clouds. He made regular guest appearances on the television series Hercules and spent more time as a painter, sculptor and designer. He designed three houses in Italy and two in California.
Soon after breaking into movies, he struck up a romance with Katharine De Mille, the daughter of Cecil B. De Mille.
They married in 1937, had four children and were divorced in 1965. Turmoil in the marriage stemmed from Mr. Quinn’s confessed romantic indiscretions with Carole Lombard, Rita Hayworth, Estelle Taylor, Maureen O’Hara, Ingrid Bergman and Ms. Bergman’s daughter Pia Lindstrom.
Turbulence in his personal life continued when in 1997 he was involved in a bitter divorce from his wife of 31 years, costume designer Iolanda Quinn, whom he met on the set of Barabbas.
Besides his autobiography, he wrote another memoir, The Original Sin.
Anthony Quinn filmography
Anthony Quinn made about 130 films; here is a select listing.
- Blood and Sand (1941)
- They Died With Their Boots On (1941)
- The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
- Back to Bataan (1945)
- The Brave Bulls (1951)
- Viva Zapata! (1952)
- Attila (1954)
- Ulysses (1954)
- La Strada (1954)
- Lust for Life (1956)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1957)
- Wild Is the Wind (1957)
- The Savage Innocents (1960)
- The Guns of Navarone (1961)
- Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
- Zorba the Greek (1964)
- The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
- The Greek Tycoon (1968)
- The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969)
- Jesus Of Nazareth (1971)
- The Inheritance (1976)
- High Rollers (1976)
- Tigers Don’t Cry (1976)
- Mohammed Messenger of God (1977)
- Caravans (1978)
- The Greek Tycoon 1978
- The Inheritance 1978
- Treasure Island 1986
- Only the Lonely (1991)
- Jungle Fever (1991)
- A Walk in the Clouds (1995)
- Seven Servants (1996)
- Ringside (1999)
