Tony Curtis

Born: June 3 1925
Where: Bronx, New York, USA

Curtis will be forever associated with the part of Chicago mobster Joe opposite Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot.

A perpetual lady's man - even in his twilight years - it's ironic he's was cast as a gigolo in his first (uncredited) big screen outing Criss Cross.

He began his career at Universal and quickly achieved leading man status, appearing primarily in pretty-boy roles for the better part of a decade.

Though paired with the similarly under-utilized Piper Laurie in a number of films, Curtis achieved his first clear success in the title role of George Marshall's Houdini in 1953.

Some less than memorable studio fare followed before his improvement began showing through in Carol Reed's Trapeze and Blake Edwards' Mister Corey.

Curtis turned in a terrific performance as the smarmy press agent Sidney Falco in Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success.

One of the first portrayals of unprincipled American ambition, his Falco was a man capable of sinking to any depth in order to get what he wanted.

The part allowed him to express a wider range of emotions than had his previous roles and led directly to The Defiant Ones, a prison break melodrama opposite Sidney Poitier.

The fully restored version of Spartacus released in 1991 included more footage of the notorious bathing scene (with its distinctly homosexual undercurrent) between Laurence Olivier and Curtis).

Curtis exhibited his facility for comedy in Wilder's 1969 classic as a musician who goes on the run from a Chicago mob in drag and tries to win the heart of Monroe en route.

Throwing in a superb impersonation of Cary Grant as a bonus, he so opened eyes to his comic potential that for the following decade Hollywood cast him in a string of comedies.

Some were hopelessly contrived, of which the best was undoubtedly Blake Edwards' Operation Petticoat.

As a comic Falco this time, con-artist Curtis wheeled and dealed and teamed brilliantly with Cary Grant, but most of his subsequent comedies (eg The Rat Race, Goodbye Charlie, The Great Race fell far short of the mark.

Since tackling the decidedly uncomic title role of The Boston Strangler, Curtis has remained afloat in a sea of mediocre films.

He re-acquainted himself with British TV audiences in the camp playboy adventure yarn The Persuaders.

His role as the Senator in Nicolas Roeg's 1975 hit Insignificance is a notable exception to a film career happy to settle for second best.

The 90s have kept him busy..but in a series of TV tributes, television roles and staight-to-video releases rather than anything work seeing.

Curtis published a novel, Kid Andrew Cody and Julie Sparrow, in 1977, followed by Tony Curtis: The Autobiography written with Barry Paris in 1993.

He has also found time to develop his skills as an artist, and his paintings, especially the Marilyn Monroe portraits, have fetched considerable sums.

Married four times, Curtis lost his oldest son Nicholas (whose mother was Curtis' third wife Lisa Allen) to a heroin overdose at the age of 23.

One of his two daughters from his first marriage to Janet Leigh is the successful actress Jamie Lee Curtis.