Sept. 30, 2010
3:18 a.m.
Actor Tony Curtis dies at 85, report says
Movie actor Tony Curtis, best known for light comedies including "Some Like It Hot," has died at 85, Entertainment Tonight is reporting.
His death was confirmed by a representive of his daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, the entertainment news show said.
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One of Hollywood's most durable actors, Curtis appeared in more than 100 movies and was nominated for a best actor Oscar for the "The Defiant Ones," the 1958 convict escape film in which he was chained to his co-star, Sidney Poitier.
But Curtis failed to receive a nomination for another strong role, one that he felt sure would finally win him an Academy Award: Albert DeSalvo, the Boston strangler. That 1968 film with the same name was the last of Curtis' major starring roles.
"After that, the pictures that I got were not particularly intriguing," he told the Seattle Times in 2000, "but I had lots of child-support payments."
For many film fans, Curtis' most memorable role was in "Some Like It Hot," the 1959 film in which he and Jack Lemmon played small-time jazz musicians who witness the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago and, pursued by gangsters who want to kill them too, pose as women in order to escape with an all-female jazz band bound for Miami.
In 2000, the American Film Institute named "Some Like It Hot" the best comedy of the 20th century.
Curtis made more than 60 feature and TV films after "The Boston Strangler," including "The Mirror Crack'd" in 1980 with Angela Lansbury and a string of forgettable movies such as "The Lobster Man from Mars" and "The Mummy Lives."
He also appeared numerous times on television sit-coms or dramatic series or as a talk-show guest. In the late 1960s, he frequently appeared on shows as "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In."
Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, in New York City, the oldest son of Jewish Hungarian immigrants. His father was a tailor and his mother raised their three boys. But the family was marked by tragedy: One of Curtis' brothers was killed at the age of 9 when he was hit by a truck, and the other, who was 15 years Curtis' junior, suffered from schizophrenia and was in and out of institutions throughout his life. /Los Angeles Times
Janet Leigh avled för några år sedan.
