Hollywood's 'Man-Deity' Honored

Charlton Heston was “the man-deity of movies,” writes Richard Corliss in a Time appreciation, declaring of the actor who stepped into the shoes of no less than the Almighty, "God is dead." Indeed, from Moses to Ben-Hur. “He was the epic hero,” Corliss notes. “Heston didn't just play great roles, he imposingly, thrillingly embodied them.”

Heston “played men of granite virtue no matter the epoch,” writes Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post. Likewise in his choice to head the NRA: "Pilloried and parodied, lampooned and bullied, he never relented, he never backed down." He was a hero to the industry, too, adding “millions in revenue and 10 IQ points” to any film in which he appeared, Corliss notes. But on a personal level, Heston wasn’t so imposing: he was “extraordinarily genial and accessible,” writes John Harti for MSNBC. (More Charlton Heston stories.)