page_title: Charlton Heston
section_title: The Ten Commandments
hierarchical_section_title: Charlton Heston / Career / The Ten Commandments
caption_attribution_description: Cropped screenshot of Charlton Heston from the trailer for the film The Ten Commandments.
context_page_description: Charlton Heston was an American actor and political activist.
  As a Hollywood star, he appeared in almost 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film The Ten Commandments, for which he received his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. He also starred in The Greatest Show on Earth, Secret of the Incas, Touch of Evil with Orson Welles, The Big Country, Ben-Hur, for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor, El Cid, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and Planet of the Apes.
  A supporter of the Civil Rights movement in his earlier years, Heston left the Democratic Party in 1971 to become a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston was a five-term president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003. After announcing he had Alzheimer's disease in 2002, he retired from both acting and the NRA presidency.
context_section_description: Heston became an icon for playing Moses in the hugely successful biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956), selected by director Cecil B. DeMille, who thought Heston bore an uncanny resemblance to Michelangelo's statue of Moses. DeMille cast Heston's three-month-old son, Fraser Clarke Heston, as the infant Moses. The Ten Commandments became one of the greatest box office successes of all time and is the seventh highest-grossing film adjusted for inflation. His portrayal of the Hebrew prophet and deliverer was praised by film critics. The Hollywood Reporter described him as "splendid, handsome and princely (and human) in the scenes dealing with him as a young man, and majestic and terrible as his role demands it". The New York Daily News wrote that he "is remarkably effective as both the young, princely Moses and as the Patriarchal savior of his people". His performance as Moses earned him his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama and Spain's Fotogramas de Plata Award for Best Foreign Performer. The Egyptian Theater made its second debut in December 1998, with a screening of Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 original The Ten Commandments, which premiered at the Egyptian 75 years earlier. Charlton and Lydia Heston were honored guests and their longtime friends brothers Charles Elias Disney and Daniel H. Disney were seated with the Heston's for this opening showing in the Egyptian Theatre.
  Heston went back to Westerns with Three Violent People (1957). Universal tried to interest him in a thriller starring Orson Welles, Touch of Evil; Heston agreed to be in it if Welles directed. The film has come to be regarded as a classic masterpiece. He also played a rare supporting role in William Wyler's The Big Country opposite Gregory Peck and Burl Ives.
  Heston got another chance to play Andrew Jackson in The Buccaneer (1958), produced by De Mille and starring Yul Brynner.
caption: Heston as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956)
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