page_title: Yul Brynner
section_title: Film stardom
hierarchical_section_title: Yul Brynner / Film stardom
caption_attribution_description: English: A charcoal drawing reprint of Yul Brynner after winning an Academy Award in 1956.
context_page_description: Yuliy Borisovich Briner, better known as Yul Brynner, was a Russian-American actor, singer, and director, considered one of the first Russian-American film stars. He became widely known for his portrayal of King Mongkut in the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical The King and I, for which he won two Tony Awards, and later won an Academy Award for the film adaptation. He played the role 4,625 times on stage and became known for his shaved head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it for The King and I.
  Brynner also starred as Ramesses II in the Cecil B. DeMille epic The Ten Commandments. He played General Bounine in the film Anastasia, the gunman Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven and its first sequel Return of the Seven, and the android "The Gunslinger" in Westworld and its sequel Futureworld.
  Brynner also worked as a model, television director and photographer, and was the author of several books.
context_section_description: Brynner's second motion picture was the film version of The King and I (1956) with Deborah Kerr. It was a huge success critically and commercially.
  Cecil B. de Mille hired him for The Ten Commandments (1956) to play Ramesses II opposite Charlton Heston after seeing him in the stage version of The King and I, telling Brynner backstage that he was the only person for the role. He rounded out his year with Anastasia (1956) co-starring with Ingrid Bergman under the direction of Anatole Litvak. Both films were big hits and Brynner became one of the most in-demand stars in Hollywood
  MGM cast him as one of The Brothers Karamazov (1958), which was another commercial success. Less so was The Buccaneer (1958) in which Brynner played Jean Lafitte; he co-starred with Heston and the film was produced by De Mille but directed by Anthony Quinn.
  MGM used Brynner again in The Journey (1959), opposite Kerr under the direction of Litvak, but the film lost money. So too did The Sound and the Fury (1959) based on the novel by William Faulkner with Joanne Woodward.
  However Brynner then received an offer to replace Tyrone Power who had died during the making of Solomon and Sheba (1959) with Gina Lollobrigida. The movie was a huge hit. It did mean though that a proposed Brynner film about Spartacus had to be postponed. When the Kirk Douglas film Spartacus (1960) came out, Brynner elected not to make his own version.
  Brynner tried comedy with two films directed by Stanley Donen: Once More, with Feeling! (1960) and Surprise Package (1960) but public response was underwhelming. He made a cameo in Testament of Orpheus.
caption: Drawing of Brynner by Nicholas Volpe after he won an Oscar for The King and I (1956)
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