Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson played O'Reilly in John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven of 1960, a sturdy veteran of war who joins the band. In the story, adapted from Akira Kurosawa's samurai film of 1954, three small boys of the village attach themselves to the Mexican-Irish O'Reilly and promise to avenge his death, while he tells them to respect their fathers and that carrying the burden of a family is courage. Three years later, in the same director's film out of Paul Brickhill's book, The Great Escape, he was Lieutenant Danny Velinski, nicknamed the Tunnel King, who at one point confesses privately to his friend that he carries a fear of enclosed places and cannot go back down. Most of it was shot in Germany, at the Bavaria Studios near Munich and around Fussen.