William Holden

Born: April 17 1918
Where: Illinois, USA
Died: November 16 1981

Few Hollywood actors have conveyed spiritual and physical pain with the charismatic authority of William Holden.

This scion of a wealthy family in the chemical business first registered in films as a clean-cut, affably handsome lead in the 1940s and he matured into more rough and tumble roles.

Along the way his earnest qualities yielded to cynicism, perhaps most notably for writer-director Billy Wilder in Sunset Boulevard in 1950 and in his Oscar-winning performance in Stalag 17.

Over the years, the rigors of life and drink re-sculpted his features into an expressive leather that gave testimony to the ravages of the moral ambiguity that had characterized many of his best roles.

This quality may have been most eloquently expressed by his central performance as the desperado cowboy Pike in Sam Peckinpah's violent autumnal Western classic The Wild Bunch.

Holden became a star with his first substantial feature role as the boxer-violinist in Golden Boy, a part that cast him opposite screen siren Barbara Stanwyck, who would later become his mentor.

Fighting with the Air Force in WWII, he returned to the screen with a more complex personality and starred in box-office favorites Dear Ruth and Rachel and the Stranger.

Nineteen Fifty proved to be Holden's watershed year: he starred in two career landmarks, Born Yesterday as Judy Holliday's culture tutor-cum-lover and Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard as Norma Desmond's hack screenwriter gigolo.

He won a best actor Oscar for his pessimistic POW suspected of being a Nazi informer in Wilder's Stalag 17 in 1953.

Holden went on to become a leading box-office star between 1954-58, including roles in Executive Suite, Sabrina and Picnic.

He played a pivotal role inThe Bridge on the River Kwai and his 1960s successes included The Counterfeit Traitor and a career highlight in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.

The 1970s saw him in Towering Inferno and Ashanti as well as some winners including the highly acclaimed Network as a conscientious TV executive.

His final film performance came in Blake Edwards' caustically comic look at Hollywood S.O.B in 1981 and he died after an accidental fall in his apartment the same year.