Charles Durning

Born on February 28, 1923, in New York, Charles Durning was the son of an army officer. During World War II he was one of the men who participated in the massive Allied landing in Normandy. The experience was so hard that for 50 years he refused to remember it. He was subsequently wounded in combat and returned to the United States.

After holding various jobs, including as a ballroom dance instructor and trying his luck as a professional boxer, Durning began playing small roles on the stage. One of the many plays in which he participated, “That Champion Season”, was a huge success.

Charles Durning played his first major film role in I Watch the Road in 1970, as a sheriff’s deputy (Gregory Peck), who suspects that he has had an extramarital affair with the daughter of a spirits distiller. From that moment, Durning did not stop appearing in the cinema, in titles as prominent as The Coup , where he shone as a corrupt police officer, or Front Page , in which he was one of Jack Lemmon ‘s rival journalists .

He returned from time to time to the theater, and even won the Tony, for playing the father in a production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams. After divorcing his wife, Carol, with whom he had three children, Charles Durning was married to the end of his life with Mary Ann Amelio, who had been his childhood ‘girlfriend’.

Durning was one of Brian de Palma ‘s first stage fetish actors , who recruited him for Hello, Mom , The Fury and Sisters . He appeared in over two hundred titles, including Dog Afternoon , Funniest House in Texas , Hindenburg , The Grass Harp , State and Main , Dick Tracy , Genie of Love , Enemy of the People , Another Town , Other Law , and especially Tootsie , where he played Jessica Lange ‘s father . joel andEthan Coen made him the suicidal company founder in 1994’s The Big Leap and Pappy O’Daniel, Governor of Mississippi, in O Brother! , from 2000.