Hollywood Colossus From a Bygone Age

As an actor, he parted seas, rode chariots and painted divine frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As a political activist, he marched with Martin Luther King, railed against the decline of moral values and challenged advocates of gun control to remove his rifle from his "cold dead hands".

Charlton Heston, the American actor whose heroic features and lean frame persuaded generations of film goers that he was the incarnation of a multitude of historical figures, died on Saturday evening at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 84.

"Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life. He was known for his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and, of course, for the roles he played," Heston's family said in a statement. "No one could ask for a fuller life than his. No man could have given more to his family, to his profession, and to his country."

No cause of death was given, although Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease. "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure," he remarked.

His longtime publicist, Michael Levine, paid tribute: "If Hollywood had a Mount Rushmore, Heston's face would be on it. He was a heroic figure that I don't think exists to the same degree in Hollywood today."

Heston himself recognized that his qualities hailed from a different age. "I have a face that belongs in another century," he noted.

That face gave him his big break, when director Cecil B DeMille chose Heston to embody Moses in The Ten Commandments.

It was the first in a succession of portrayals of historical figures that defined Heston's film career: he played president Andrew Jackson (twice), Cardinal Richelieu (also twice), Moses, John the Baptist, Michelangelo, Henry VIII, General Charles Gordon, and Buffalo Bill Cody.

But it was the role of Judah Ben-Hur that brought him most recognition, earning him an Oscar in 1960.

In the early 1960s Heston became involved in politics: a supporter of John F Kennedy, he was one of the highest-profile Hollywood figures to march with King. But he moved away from Democratic politics, becoming a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964. Heston saw his shift somewhat differently: "My politics haven't changed," he said. "It was the Democratic party that changed."

He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and as head of President Reagan's arts task force, but it was his election as president of the National Rifle Association in 1998 that attracted most controversy. In a speech the previous year he had described the threat of a "cultural war ... storming our values, assaulting our freedoms, killing our self-confidence in who we are and what we believe."

Heston was born John Charles Carter on October 4 1923. His family moved from the Chicago suburbs to Michigan, before his parents divorced. He moved with his mother to Illinois, where she married Chester Heston. Her son took that name and his mother's maiden name for his stage name.

He later said that he decided to hide his shyness in acting. "What acting offered me was the chance to be many other people. In those days I wasn't satisfied with being me," he said in 1986.

He studied drama at university before joining the US Army Air Forces in 1943. After the war, he and his wife Lydia, to whom he had been married for 64 years when he died, moved to New York and North Carolina before he got a break appearing in Julius Caesar on Broadway. That led to television work, which brought him to the attention of Hollywood. Heston made one more truly notable film after Ben-Hur - Planet of the Apes. After that his career was dominated by disaster - Earthquake, Airport 1975 - and soap: Dynasty and its spin-off, The Colbys.