His Life in PICTURES

“ALL MY life I had one dream, and that was to be in the movies,” Tony Curtis admitted in his 2008 autobiography American Prince. But as a poor Jewish kid named Bernard Schwartz who grew up in NYC with a mother who would just as soon “kiss me or punch me in the mouth,” it didn’t seem likely.

- 

"Acting is something that we all practice at some time in our lives." -Tony Curtis

With confidence in his own “looks,” he made it to Hollywood, developing a talent for eclectic roles and a penchant for press with his six marriages, including most famously to actress Janet Leigh. Yet through it all, Tony, who would’ve turned 100 on June 3, maintained an outlook on life that was easy to embrace. “I’ve lived my time here fully,” he shared in his autobiography. “And I hope that you’ll live the rest of your time to the fullest. I don’t see any other good way to go.”

1 1953 NOT SO MAGICAL

Tony wed actress Janet Leigh — the first of what would become his six wives — before they made the biopic Houdini. But he would later confess, “I shouldn’t have gotten married. There was a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, but I wanted to become a part of something. Janet had entrée to everybody in the movies, so to me [being with her] was very valuable.”

1958 BEING DEFIANT

“For me to do a movie like